Ben Caplan makes being haunted sound like a helluva good time on Birds With Broken Wings. The Halifax-based troubadour's second album is rife with rattling offbeat percussion, creaking fiddle playing and spine-tingling nimble fretwork in the guitar parts. But nothing sounds more devilish on the LP than the songwriter's own voice, with which he howls and growls like an eternally damned scoundrel on many of the tracks.

Caplan's lyricism is chillingly bizarre throughout much of the album. On the title track, he hoarsely demands that he be brought "mounds of human hair" and that "all the trees get in single file." Those lyrics are complemented by the tune's instrumentation, which sounds like an incantation that mixes elements of Django Reinhardt and Tom Waits. Midway tunes "Dusk" and "I Got Me a Woman" will also raise listeners' eyebrows, what with the former's mariachi horns and the latter's fairly wholesome female accompaniment to Caplan's abrasive singing.

The album was originally released in May 2015 and now see its distribution back to the marketplace through Rhyme & Reason Records