Myths and truths of a country on the way down, viewed through a deep-focus lens trained on the city from the deserts on the east; Cory Hanson’s Pale Horse Rider is an ecstatic vision poised in a sonic terminus of unoccupied residential parks and streets, fading into craggy footpaths to nowhere. From this vantage point, our passage is seen as diligent, ephemeral and grotesque by turns, forgiven and made beautiful again by the sound of the music.

Cory’s adroit ability to flip through the gains and losses of any given moment with a simple line or two is given delicate bloom on the latest single “Bird of Paradise.” An ominous fever dream of opaque moral lessons (a la Bobbie Gentry’s “Refractions”), “Bird of Paradise” is a flowing ballad sparked from within by bubbling guitar arpeggios, glittering electric keyboards and arcs of steel guitar like falling stars shooting through the night sky. Moods of estrangement and desire play out delicately in the shadowy grid of a deserted urban landscape.

The woods are not what they seem. Listen to “Bird of Paradise” today and curl up with Pale Horse Rider on 4/16.