Singer-songwriters have quite a balancing act before them. They have to weigh the mark of their influences against their own vision, reverence vs. deference in the hopes that something personal and engaging comes out in the mix. You can almost hear the click of the CD changer belonging to James Van Way, songwriter for Lafayette band Markings, swapping between Richard Buckner and R.E.M.—the confessional, fragmented lyrics of the latter furtively rounding the corners of the jangly comforts of the latter. It opens bravely—and bravery is perhaps the most important element in a singer-songwriter— with an 8-minute epic, “Rhino Sebastian Robot Rain,” a song put together like a train of salvaged cars with a pastoral segment here, jagged racket there, all powered and held together by the gruff rasp of his voice.

That voice leads us to the second balancing factor facing a songwriter: how do I use the tools at hand to realize the ideas in their head. Van Way and members of his former band the Frames of Reference make a cohesive body of work that underscores his background in painting. The differences in the songs are in the details, the hues employed. “The Vampire, the Thief, the Birdman & Its Lover” opens with the line, “I don’t believe in miracles,” coaxing optimism out of the realistic to wind up with “I’m not lonely all the time.” “The Desert Years” strips its riff down to the carcass while “The Registry” adopts a cautious effervescence. These songs feel close to the bone, like facets of a self portrait that individually reveal the personal, but together make a portrait of something a little bigger than the artist, showing that Markings has the balance right.