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THE VINYL SKYWAY. Tragic circumstances have shadowed Boston singer-songwriter Michael Hayes through most of his life, visiting his music as both haunting specter and inspiring muse. Hayes’s previous band, Lemonpeeler, mined country-tinged territories that, even at their most straightforwardly rocking, were suffused with a deep pastoral ache. On the band’s lone full-length, 2001’s The First Time (self-released on their Sissybar Records imprint), the subject matter ranged from the experience of watching a close friend’s downward spiral into drug addiction ("Around") to a fear of flying ("Northbound Plane") to yearning for vanished lovers ("Caroline’s Gone"). Just as the band hit the road to promote the album, Hayes’s father died.

Hayes’s new project, the Vinyl Skyway (the name of his band, their first CD, and the in-house label he runs with his wife, Susan), is also braced for disaster ("Armageddon’s just one bomb away" is one lyric, from "Brilliant Ones"), and it’s marked by an even more acute melancholy. It’s also twice as comely as its predecessors. (Lemonpeeler released an EP, The Woolly Sessions, that turned out to be the band’s de facto farewell.) One new track in particular, "Windfall," about loss and grasping in vain for a loved one, is gorgeous in its gentle distress. Hayes says it’s for, and about, his late mother. There are also songs about faith and betrayal ("The Reverend’s Prey" is an un-preachy meditation on the Catholic Church scandal), street-corner blues ("That Girl"), and early-morning benders ("Cold Feet") that would sit nicely alongside Wilco’s Being There.

"My mom died of cancer when I was six years old, and I’ve had a lot of people die in my life," Hayes says over drinks at the Middle East. "It’s not like I’m obsessed with death, but I certainly feel an affinity for people who have passed on. Death is a heavy thing, but it can also be a beautiful thing, and songwriting can be part of a cleansing process." Indeed, dovetailing themes of reconciliation, redemption, and the search to find peace of mind amid heartache and regret are what give The Vinyl Skyway its gorgeous glow. Well, that and Hayes’s halting, throat-catching tenor, which can coast through a melody as smooth and sweet as peaches and cream one moment before lingering over a heartbreakingly simple couplet like "I’m hangin’ on/To broken songs" ("Brilliant Ones") another.

After Lemonpeeler split amid acrimony and what Hayes now confesses was too much self-imposed pressure too soon, the songwriter "needed to start something new." He began working up demos with a sympathetic collaborator, former Jr. Corduroy guitarist Andy Santospago. "In Lemonpeeler, we were desperate," Hayes says. "You want so badly to become full-time musicians that you become impetuous and make decisions that maybe aren’t the best for you." (The members of Lemonpeeler have since repaired their frayed friendships, and they even performed together during a reunion gig at the Vinyl Skyway’s CD-release party this past autumn.) "This time, I just wanted to play with friends, so we started Sunday-afternoon rehearsals in my kitchen, drinking beers, singing for three hours — my songs, cover songs, whatever. And then my grandmother cut me a check for $5000. I was like, ‘Wow!’ She’s 95 years old, and she said, ‘I won’t be here very long, so go record and enjoy this.’ "

Hayes quit his day job at an investment firm, where he had been miserable, and blocked out a week’s worth of studio time at Q Division Studios in Somerville, where a cast of some dozen friends and musicians dropped by to sing a harmony here or lay down a bass line there. Santospago was the Vinyl Skyway’s not-so-secret weapon, handling the lion’s share of lead-guitar duties and chipping in on everything from lap steel to dobro to cello. "People say it must be a struggle to be a musician, but I got to make this album," Hayes says. "What if I had no money? It wouldn’t have happened. A lot of great songwriters have no money at all and will never have that kind of opportunity. I felt lucky."