Nothing but the truth in this album title, since every track on the album is about one or all of the above. Though he’s recorded some upbeat rock ’n’ roll in his time, Grayson Capps here turns his attention to the darker corners of the American songbook—murder ballads, downcast country songs, foreboding gospel numbers, and Leonard Cohen’s greatest hit are all accounted for. If you’re one of those depressives who became a Johnny Cash fan because of the haunting American Recordings albums, you’ll be right at home.

But there are reasons why songs like these have stuck around for decades, not least because they tell good stories. “Guilty” may be the saddest song in Randy Newman’s catalogue, but it makes a convincing case that the most messed-up people can love the hardest. The Paul Siebel song “Louise” (probably best known by Leo Kottke) expresses sympathy for a character that saw too little of it in her life. “Moody River” wraps a tale of betrayal and guilt into a package catchy enough that Pat Boone once had a hit with it. The Gordon Lighfoot tune “Early Morning Rain” is as upbeat as these songs get—at least nobody dies in it—but it captures the feeling of rootless drifting as well as any. He even finds the underlying melancholia in “Today,” originally a hit for the chipper New Christy Minstrels.

Capps treats these songs with proper respect, with acoustic drum-less arrangements that keep the wizened voice upfront. It’s not quite as somber as those Cash albums but he keeps things unvarnished; on Cohen’s “Hallelujah” he steers clear of the sentimentality that’s ruined too many versions. It’s a neat bit of musicology, and quite enjoyable as gloom-fests go.