he Black Heart Procession is responsible for the most intense listening experience I have ever had. “Guess I’ll Forget You”, from their 2000 album III, was the first song to make me cry. A brilliant song in its own right, “Guess I’ll Forget You” entered my life at a time when I knew I was in love, and hearing someone articulate the exact feelings I would face if that love fell apart was devastating. Imagining myself in the emotional space that the song described was just too much. I’d love to mention that at the same time it was a rewarding experience because it taught me that I was still able to be affected by a song, but that would be skirting the issue. I bawled. Uncontrollably. And then I listened to the song again.

After breaking someone’s heart, however, there’s little left to teach them. They’ve been reduced to their weakest, most vulnerable state once, and to make them revisit that state you must be able to conjure up enough darkness to not only match your previous assault but to compensate for your victim’s hard-won wisdom. It’s an impossible task, one that the Black Heart Procession don’t even try to perform. Rather than attempt to replicate the bleak heartbreak of III, the band has constructed Amore del Tropico a southwest-flavored murder mystery which, while brimming with a newfound vitality and gaining strength from a broader sound, fails to strike as deep a chord as III.

The mood is established immediately by the prickly desert cabaret of “Tropics of Love”. Distant guitars, violins and female crooning dance around Pall A. Jenkins’ (credited here as Paulo Zappoli) strident calls, sounding like a carnival-barker beckoning you to immerse yourself in the album. It’s tastefully executed, authentic and an easy invitation to accept. The following two songs abandon “Tropics”’s jittery romanticism but maintain its quality. “Broken World” is breezy, tropical loneliness, bringing to mind the delicate, singular swirl of a tide pool; “Why I Stay” is dark, down-tempo Sadies-esque swing and is the first song to feature Jenkins’ baritone, his strongest vocal weapon.

But few of Amore’s remaining songs are as great as the first three. “Did You Wonder” is brisk rock that is as plaintive as it is pounding. “A Sign On the Road” is a mournful, eerie, moonlit drag of slide guitar and foreboding refrains. “The One Who Has Disappeared” is as crushing as an acoustic campfire song can be. Its painful simplicity and heart-rending lyrics (“When I write my name, no words appear...The way you look through me I know I’m the one/Who has disappeared”) ensure its place in the upper echelon of the BHP’s catalogue, but it is the album’s last song, and there are a lot of problems before it comes around.

The most glaring of which are the lyrics. They are too cryptic. If Amore is to be taken seriously as a narrative concept album, shouldn’t the songs tell a more cohesive story? Not once do we meet a character, envision a setting or detect a plot. The lyrics, therefore, seem unhelpful, if not downright meaningless. Who is “The Visitor”? What is the significance of “A Sign on the Road”? Whose fingerprints are found in “Fingerprints”? Even the most mysterious, unintelligible lyrics can be meaningful if placed in the right context; but you wouldn’t use them to tell a story.

Additionally, a number of songs crumple under the weight of the album’s ambition. “Invitation” is too melodramatic to strike any emotional oil. “The Visitor” is long, un-dynamic and contains an ending that could only be described as hokey. “A Cry For Love” is a smoky ballad that, at six minutes, is nowhere near as epic as it thinks it is. “Only One Way” has a grating, awkwardly assertive chorus; “Fingerprints” is silly, sounding almost like a song you might hear if a murder mystery was taking place on Frasier; and “Before the People”, despite its attempts to move the album’s plot along and a great, percussive bass line, is repetitive and somewhat dull.

Regardless, Amore del Tropico is a fine, fine record: a lively, lovely concept album that bridges the gap between Nick Cave and Calexico. Perhaps it suffers from unrealistic expectations; perhaps its narrative ambitions received attention that should have been paid to the weaker tracks; perhaps it’s just hard to fall in love with a song when you can’t confuse yourself with its hero.