Jail Weddings singer, guitarist and svengali Gabriel Hart spent the early part of the 2000s rejiggering the Gun Clubbed greaser anthems of his first band, the Starvations, through a couple line-up and name changes and some solo stints, along the way making some of the most underrated, moody garage rock of the decade. Partly due to those frequent changes and infrequent touring, his LA-based acts have remained a bit of a connoisseur’s delight, the kind that if you know them, you love them, but you’ll be alone in your admiration.

It’s not that Hart doesn’t have the songwriting chops or high melodrama in his poet’s lungs to match the Arcade Fire-ings of the increasingly Spector-ish indie rock terrain that gets a lot of play in, like, TV teen soap operas and lame dysfunctional family indie flicks. It’s just Hart’s sonic sensibility has always wallowed in a scruffy, sullied sadness that doesn’t lend itself to a gaggle of multicultural models prancing through a perfectly set-designed loft party or Target ad.

But here, on Jail Weddings debut full-length (after a few singles), Hart begins with a brief, sparse, slow-burn orchestral crescendo that feels more like a closing credits theme—perfect for Jail Weddings’ intentions of moving on from the gutter to the, well, secrets-buried backyard. The duet, “When We’re Together,” shifts the album into gear with a peppier pathos, a la some Neil Diamond–penned ’60s go-go kick. Hart lets the girls take the reigns on “Tough Love,” making like Nikki & the Corvettes gone sashaying over a termite-bitten boardwalk ’round sunset. Another kind of chase happens in “Somebody Lonely,” with Hart yearning towards a girl-group vibe ambling just ahead of his pace down a rainy street. There’s a lot of yearning on Love Is Lawless, but also a bolero’s bravado that, for all the broken hearts, dead lovers, faraway hopes, etc, can stick it out ’til the last dance.

For a cat that most likely broods awake at night, well past tipsy and figuring what to do with the trumpet in the mix the next afternoon, there are bound to be over-reaches. “Eavesdroppin’,” a lonely lament that lyrically calls for his lone voice and one sax wailing, could use some back-up vox to flesh it out—until tamborines and gal-vox rush comes flowing out and into the next tune, “Staring at the Stars,” a fine dramatic, horn-hopped tale about over-acting. Hart does still have a tendency to elongate his verbiage, fumbling his enunciation at times, but now has swell swelling femme “whoa-ohs” to weave the dented hearse back onto the right side of the blurry dotted lines.

And it really isn’t until the very last tune, “The Impossible,” that Hart and company grasp for that maudlin kitchen sink and overload the orchestral proceedings—not unlike a good opening credits theme—though 50% of it is still just vocals. The band is really adept at dropping in horn, piano and string bits that don’t sound too ostentatious. Somewhere Willy DeVille is smiling….

One would think there’s a Cinemascope epic or heist-gone-wrong B-yarn—or at least a CW drama—out there just waiting for Jail Weddings. Still, more Johnnie Ray than Jeff Buckley and more Detour than Douglas Sirk, Hart and his comrades may remain the connoisseur’s enamored secret.

-Eric Davidson