Joe Henry albums aren’t easy. His lyrics are never from the easy surrealist school that too often creates word soup instead of something evocative. They’re abstractions created through subtraction, illustrating what becomes of a narrative when a few key parts are omitted? His lyrics are stories told by narcoleptics and self-absorbed businessmen, this time drawing from the blues tradition. He explores refrains and repetition to see what they give him, then sets those words and melodies in music that draws from a host of American musical traditions. A cornet played by guitarist Marc Ribot evokes New Orleans jazz during “The Man I Keep Hid,” then Patrick Warren answers post-Monk piano to Ribot’s folk blues for “All Blues Hail Mary.”

It’s an eclecticism that matches Henry’s lyrics—one that his production of Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi only hints at—but it holds together because the producer in him limits his sonic palate. Jay Bellarose employs a soft, wet drum that Henry describes as the sound of “Fats Waller taking a fall down a flight of stairs into a damp alley.” Matched with David Piltch’s comparably airy bass, the rhythm section provides a murky, unsettled underpinning from which beautiful melodies and explosive moments emerge.

Like The Bright Mississippi, Blood from Stars is the product of someone making music as art, and someone who believes in the value of privacy and mystery in art. In a city where some bands would tie your laces for you to keep you in the club, those are almost alien concepts, but Henry shows here how rewarding they can be.