Rodney DeCroo - "Lou Reed On The Radio" (Tonic Records): This Vancouver-based singer/songwriter will release his seventh album, Old Tenement Man, on Friday. DeCroo's name may well be unfamiliar, as he has been toiling away on the margins as an independent artist whose dark intensity is not a good fit for commercial radio.

He deserves a hearing though, and this focus track has a more vibrant musical vibe than much of his previous work. The insistent jangly guitar will grab you first, then the bleakness of his lyrics sink in. Sample: "Right now the anger is all I have, right now I want to hurt myself so bad."

We reckon Lou Reed would have approved of this one.

DeCroo's previous album, Campfires on the Moon, was acoustic-based, but he turns up the volume on Old Tenement Man, with bracing results.

Born in the US, he was a published poet prior to starting his recording career in 2004.

DeCroo begins his Western Canada tour in Kimberley BC at The Green Door on May 4, and it runs to May 31, with a show at The Cultch in Vancouver that is also the launch of his new poetry book Next Door To The Butcher Shop (Nightwood Editions).