Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is an old pickup truck: The cracks and rust in his voice testify to the hard miles he’s traveled, the imperfections providing a patina of authenticity in a world full of glossy paint and auto-tune. The sad lilt in his voice invites us to load our own sorrows into his rusty cargo bed, so that he might carry them to the sea.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, the latest stage name for prolific Louisville balladeer Will Oldham, is back with Best Troubador, a collection of songs by legendary country artist Merle Haggard, long an inspiration and role model for Oldham, who played one of Haggard’s songs in his first public performance.

The album kicks off with the upbeat “The Fugitive,” featuring a full band (The Bonafide United Musicians) with a polished Nashville sound that travels far enough south to pick up a whiff of Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville before moving onto more sorrowful pastures, but not before running through the chipper second track “I’m Always on a Mountain When I Fall.”

The album really begins to shine as Oldham strips away the instrumentation, brings the volume way down, and plumbs the darker recesses of Haggard’s extensive catalog. From the sweet vocal harmonies on “The Days the Rain Came” to the gentle rhythm of “Haggard (Like I’ve Been Before),” these quieter songs give Oldham more room to shine vocally.

NPR FIRST LISTEN: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Best Troubador

For me, the album’s gem is “I Always Get Lucky With You,” a song so sweet and unassuming it’ll almost make your teeth hurt, but delivered with such earnest admiration for the source material that there’s more than enough love to go around. This is the song that accompanies the montage of your loved ones frolicking in your memories.

Oldham jumps around Haggard’s catalog, leapfrogging between 1967 and 2011 and hitting points in between, but the album consists only of deep cuts, omitting all of Haggard’s signature tunes. Later standouts on the album include the dirge-y “Pray,” the tears and bourbon mixture of “My Old Pal,” and “I Am What I Am,” which sounds perhaps closest to Oldham’s own work, illustrating the incredible influence Haggard had on his musical trajectory.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is just the latest incarnation for Oldham, who has performed and recorded as Palace Music, Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and more, and Oldham is just another in a long line of morose troubadours that stretches forward from the first emo dude, medieval lutenist John Dowland, to Hank Williams to George Jones men so lonely they could die.

A lovely way to come down from a long day, Best Troubadour is best listened to late in the evening, when you’ve done all you can do for the day and you just want to sit there and have your heart broken, slowly, over and over again.

Follow David Gill at Twitter.com/Songotaku.