Everyone has a friend like Ben Nichols, the lead singer and songwriter for Memphis, TN’s Lucero. He’s that guy who’s always with you at the bar drinking glass after glass of straight whiskey, then afterwards going with you to the Texaco to stock up on King Cobra 40 oz malt liquor. He’s always been inexplicably cool, and after a while you realize what it is that makes him so cool: unlike your other friends, your friend hasn’t talked about himself at all. In fact, he doesn’t want to talk about himself; he wants to talk about music, movies, anything…as long as the subject isn’t him. But then something weird happens; its half past three and you’re both three sheets to the wind and he suddenly starts opening up to you. He tells you all his deepest secrets; heartbreaking declarations about girls who broke his heart and how he regrets never enlisting in the army and how that makes him feel like he’s let down his dead grandfather. And it’s so unexpected that it would be uncomfortable if it weren’t so heartbreaking. Not only does this guy have feelings, but he’s deeply pained; and here you thought he just wanted to have a good time.

This is what Lucero’s music sounds like. A percentage of the songs are rockers about going out tonight and drinking yourself belligerent and another percentage are about the day after, when the cold reality of life kicks your ass out of bed and back to the grind of the day-to-day. But even the songs that sound upbeat and rocking have dark lyrical undertones (and sometimes it’s just blatantly depressing).

Case in point is “Tonight Ain’t Gonna Be Good.” Beginning with a palm-muted guitar riff, this song from their 2003 effort That Much Further West is the archetype for Lucero’s “going out tonight” song, offering an inner monologue of a guy who’s at a bar where from the moment he walks through the doors he “can feel the trouble start” and in the chorus (where the band begins to rock out in a fury) he thinks of his girl at home telling him “don’t go to the show tonight / The summer’s winding down / There’s gonna be a fight.” He knows “it ain’t no good” but like most men, he’s too stubborn and doesn’t care. He’d rather go and face whatever trouble awaits him than chicken out. The song ends with the men approaching him all smiles, and he’s probably about to get his ass kicked, but he was resigned to that fact before he even left his house. It’s not far from Nebraska-era Springsteen; all doomed characters and the even further damning actions they make.

“Nights Like These” is one of Lucero’s most straightforward and beautiful songs. Opening with a lone electric guitar figure and the line “nights like these that make me sleep all day” it’s already clear the narrator is talking about an all night drinking binge. Nichols continues talking about what “nights like these” do to him, where “nothing is for sure” and he “feels like giving up.” It’s the time of night when he’s wrestling with his feelings for a girl he’s lost and the whiskey isn’t working anymore; and when they finally get to the bridge the guitars and drums drop out, leaving a lone B3 organ and Nichols voice: “The beer tastes like blood and my mouth is numb / I can’t make the words I need to say / She had a weakness for writers / And I was never that good at the words anyways” before breaking into a soaring guitar solo. It’s the kind of song that’s been done a million times, but rarely does the lyrical intent and music work together so well.

But perhaps the best example of Nichols’ songwriting is his least personal (and most Springsteen-like) song: “The War” is a song told in the voice of a WWII veteran, haunted and conflicted by the way he eschewed God and honor in the name of covering his own ass. He let his friends die and cursed the name of the Lord and now he can’t sleep at night, wishing he were dead too. It’s the kind of sad, multifaceted truth that only the best lyricists can pull off.

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