Never shy of coming forward about topics such as public heartbreaks and private struggles, Mark Oliver Everett – Eels’ benign dictator and chief bottle washer – once again airs his personal grievances within the context of his art.

Everett is as auteur-like a songwriter as you can imagine, and in the past he has written about his sister's suicide and his mother's fight with cancer (on 1998's Electro-Shock Blues) . Here he dwells – intensely so – on the perilous state of his personal relationships.

Such self-analysis often takes the humourless, melody-free (and on occasion, very loud) route. But Everett has always been a different kind of operator, and he tackles such subjects in a wryly introspective manner that is not only serene but invested in the kind of folk/pop melodies last heard on Beck's Sea Change (2012).

Beck has also detailed personal, solitary heartache, but with a kind of sweetness. Everett, in contrast, strips away the sugar – there's little hope here. "The pressure in the house has changed, death rattles our window panes," he sings none too cheerily in the remarkably foreboding Lockdown Hurricane. Even the album title, you note with a shiver, is a warning.

The 13-track song cycle starts and ends with statement tunes, Where I'm At and Where I'm Going. (track No 6, not without a hint of a coincidence, is Where I'm From) . so from the get-go Everett strikes an inquisitive and discerning stance. It goes without saying that it's all executed in his customary unflinchingly honest style, and sung in a weathered, morose voice on first-name terms with Randy Newman and early Tom Waits.

Songs such as Parallels, Lockdown Hurricane, A Swallow in the Sun, Gentleman's Choice, Mistake of My Youth – the entire album, if truth be told – ooze loss and regret and self-recrimination like nothing you've heard for quite some time. eelstheband.com

Download: Lockdown Hurricane, Gentleman's Choice, Mistake of My Youth, Where I'm Going