“Hell, I don’t know where I’m going in life, but I know where I’m going tonight” is a sentiment that Michael Paul Lawson has grown accustomed to. It also serves as the hook on the opening track of his latest LP, Love Songs For Loners, a collection of eight distinctive songs about drifters, eccentrics, and those who never quite found their place. Produced by Ken Coomer (Wilco, Will Hoge, Arlo McKinley), Love Songs For Loners is swaggering yet subtle, toeing the line between classic country and the darker folk sound of his 2019 release Some Fights You’ll Never Win. Lawson stares down his own base instincts the way Raymond Carver might — with sparse, economical short stories tangled up in hopelessness and the last legs of youthful optimism.