On his third album, the 23-year-old Kieran McGee sets tales of spiritual desolation, heartbreak, and death to melodies that counter the weight of those themes with wit and a bracing lust for life. It's not an approach specific to him - Ryan Adams, Jim White, and early Beck all come to mind as you listen. But McGee's conviction and craftsmanship more than earn him rights to the territory. Members of the root-rock outfit Ollabelle - including the singer Amy Helm, whose dad, Levon, drums on one track - support McGee on Anonymous; Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley also drums on four songs. But McGee easily holds the spotlight. His voice, a vulnerable quaver that constantly threatens to slide off pitch but never does, adds a rich tension to the slumming, Stones-like country decadence of "Odessa," while the title track - like much of Anonymous - is haunted by the memory of a former lover. Because McGee released his first album (Left for Dead) when he was 15 (his second, Ash Wednesday, never got a proper release), he's often said to be old beyond his years. That's true, but he's also maintained a wild innocence. Anonymous is a portrait of the artist still wide-eyed after the holocaust. And it very much fails to live up to its title.

—Anthony DeCurtis