Some artists feel the need to hide behind layers of artifice, carefully crafted personas and vague lyrical metaphors. When Luke Doucet croons "it takes a uniquely fucked up man to break his own heart" on the song "One Too Many," off his second solo offering Broken (and Other Rogue States) he clearly isn't hiding. Where in the past Doucet has traded in the sundry narratives of a revolving cast of outlaws, deviants and scoundrels, Broken is an album which smacks of personal heartbreak. The result is Doucet's most cohesive release to date, a fine mix of bitter sentiment, casual virtuosity and a directness surprising even the artist himself.

"My personal life hijacked my artistic life in some ways," says the singer and guitarist of the breakup sparking the album's genesis. "I got so all consumed by it, it's pretty hard not to write about something like that. It's such a classic theme, you find yourself thinking and writing things that have been thought and written before, and you realize where the impetus for all those break-up records comes from--it's a real life experience. So I found myself doing this thing that's been done so many times before, and wondering, can I put a new spin on it? That was the challenge."

It's a challenge Doucet is uniquely suited to. Whether on his own or in his rock band Veal, Doucet has an unrivalled ability to draw on classical, almost archetypal, elements to create something new and vital. Broken continues this trend, drawing influence from classic country music but also blending in such diverse elements as indie-pop, surf-rock and calypso to create a sound as rooted in the past as it is undeniably modern. In other words, timeless.

One of Doucet's major strengths is his ability to avoid the sentimentality and dour seriousness most artists tack on to any discussion of love. Lyrically, Broken is as cynical a breakup album as you could ever want, and lines like "You've gotta have a heart to have a broken one" from "Broken One" could easily become cheesy, but Doucet is smart enough to deliver them with a smirk. His mischievousness saves the album from wallowing in bitterness.

"The vindictive elements are still there, they're just a little more playful now that I've made the record than when I was wallowing in the midst of that state," Doucet explains. "I don't want to make music that dark. Sadness has its value in a musical context, but music should be a celebration. It's supposed to make people feel good or feel something strongly, and once we went into the studio after the songs were all written, I was no longer in that dark headspace. I think maybe what this record sounds like is the sound of somebody digging himself out of a hole instead of trampling the dirt when he's in it."

This balance between lyrical pessimism and musical optimism is the product of a long running maturity in Doucet's writing, even if it hasn't always been obvious. There is a restrained hedonism to his work, reveling in regrets and afterthoughts as much as drugs and alcohol. Consider it the consequence of a belated adolescence.

"I was an adult when I was 10, I skipped childhood largely," admits Doucet. "I'm not bragging about that, I think it's in some ways kind of a shame. I was always preoccupied with things that I didn't necessarily need to, and I might have benefited from relaxing a bit. People would say that I still might. So there's always been an air of that, when I force myself to be a juvenile, which often I have to do for my music, I have a rock and roll band and there's my excuse to act like a teenager, which I did and that was really fun. I don't know, I'm okay with adulthood, I always have been."

In a world dominated by aging rockers grasping at their youth, accepting adulthood can be a big risk. But this frankness makes Doucet's work so refreshing. He approaches his music without artifice, just a desire to communicate and to craft something to stand the test of time.

"The only time I'm conscious of it from a social angle, I'm in the music industry which places a premium on youth," he explains. "There comes a time when you start to be conscious of who you are and how you fit into an industry that is really style conscious and really youth based. Fortunately, I think I make music that might be able to age gracefully. That's what I hope. If you make music that can age gracefully, then I think you can age gracefully with it."