On his debut album, Wisconsin native Jeff Hanson isn’t afraid to throw himself into the ring with such notoriously moody singer-songwriters as Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Harry Nilsson, and, perhaps most obviously, Elliott Smith. The material on Son might even be mistaken for Smith’s if it weren’t for Hanson’s higher, more effeminate vocals. His delicate and beautiful voice is equally at home in the sparse, acoustic "Hiding Behind the Moon" and in the more fully arranged Lennonesque pop track "Everything You Do." But it’s amid the album’s lushest melodies — like the one that weaves its way through the gentle "The End of Everything Known" — that his singing stands out.

Like Smith, Hanson plays almost all of the instrumentation himself, and he creates the audio illusion of ensemble performances. Given his affiliation with the Olympia-based indie Kill Rock Stars, the label from which Smith launched his solo career, Hanson can expect many comparisons with the now DreamWorks-signed indie troubadour. But his songwriting and his delivery are good enough to stand up to the scrutiny.