Blessed with a seemingly effortless melodic gift and one of the warmest, most penetrating vocal deliveries in American music, Darden Smith has somehow eluded significant enduring attention in his two-decade career. His restless stylistic evolution — and the inevitable label-hopping that goes with such shape-shifting — no doubt played a part in this, yet from his beginnings as a traditional Texas troubadour to a brief fling with mainstream country to adult-pop crossover to folk-rock to his recent explorations of brooding, jazz-inflected folk-pop, quality has been a constant. Field Of Crows eschews high-steppers for a relaxed, late-night mix of gorgeous, keyboard-dominated midtempo tunes and ballads that evoke the likes of Nick Drake, latter-period Elvis Costello and Leonard Cohen. Throughout, Smith conveys a seductive brand of melancholy with the weary authority of a man who not only knows he’s on thin ice, but has plunged through it plenty of times. Intimate and artful, yet never precious, Field Of Crows finds beauty, solace and even redemption on the dark side of life.