He’s Borrowed a Few Pages From Serious Literature

The album: “Inhabiting the Ball” (the Telegraph Company).

The performer: Jim Roll.

The deal: Pop music and serious literature have always engaged in a wary dance, but now this obscure singer-songwriter has put them in bed together. On his recently released third album, Roll sets to music lyrics written for him by two acclaimed authors, Rick Moody (“The Ice Storm”) and Denis Johnson (“Jesus’ Son”).

The panorama Americana born of the teaming casts an eye on the nation’s social and psychic underbelly, with Moody, known for his dissections of suburbia, contributing whimsical (“In Flight Magazines”) and regretful (“Blue Guitar”) tales, and outsider-chronicler Johnson providing evocative if enigmatic moments (the title song and “You”).

Roll, whose experiment-spiked musical settings jump from Neil Young folk to Stones rock to alt-country, doesn’t shrink in this company, turning in among his five solo works the compelling narrative “Orphan Train.”

Back story: Roll, a Chicago native who now lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., simply wrote to two of his favorite authors and asked if they had any lyrics they’d like him to turn into songs. Moody and Johnson both went for it. “I just kind of was taken by the fact that both of these guys referenced music a lot so I just thought I would give it a shot,” says Roll.

He wasn’t intimidated by putting his lyrics up against the work of two noted wordsmiths. “I didn’t feel like they had slaved over chiseling the perfect pop song or anything, and they were surreal enough where I felt like a could find little spaces in between their songs and have this kind of fun little record.

“For me it’s a modern, digital, slightly cartoonish version of [Harry Smith’s] ‘Anthology of American Folk Music.’ Just kind of strange characters that could exist now, as opposed to the characters like John Henry.”

--Richard Cromelin