The City that Care Forgot arguably holds a more powerful allure for artistic types, post-K, than it ever has. Feeling sad and doomed but looking for beauty and freedom? NOLA’s got all those things covered for people like Mike Torian, a sometime-Nashville songwriter who wants us to see the city through his eyes on this debut album.

Unfortunately, he’s new here, or so the lyrics would suggest: voodoo pops up on the very first song, albeit as a sexual metaphor, and Torian has some frankly touristy ideas about what the city has to offer on the Randy Newman-style “Where That Dixieland Band Plays.” (You want a room near Jackson Square for Mardi Gras? Okay.) And his lyrical style can be distressingly one-dimensional: “The Last Gravedigger” portentously gropes around for a profound post-apocalyptic truth it never locate and, while “Kazak’s House” couldn’t possibly be literally about a dog that holds parties in his doghouse, Torian doesn’t play it like a metaphor.