Artists who harbor ambitions that outstrip their talent often try to pre-empt accusations of pretentiousness by hiding behind surface ironies. Luke Haines called his first rock band the Auteurs, thus placing quotation marks around whatever they produced, which was mostly literary-minded rock descended from the Bowie-Reed school of decadent narcissism.

The Auteurs' success was limited by a failure to get specific. Each of the group's albums took off on a different musical tangent, so if you liked one of them you may not have liked any of the others. Haines has since narrowed his priorities, first with a solo project, Baader-Meinhof, and now with Black Box Recorder, whose second album, "The Facts of Life," has given him his first top-20 single.

Sarah Nixey, a former mime, provides the kind of cold, singsongy vocals that Haines himself has never been able to pull off. It's a special blessing, since Haines, like Richard Thompson and Ben Watt, turns out to be the kind of writer who does his best work for a female POV, though I suppose some of the credit should go to Haines' co-writer, John Moore, formerly of the Jesus and Mary Chain.