Timothy Showalter has a beard, an acoustic guitar, and a heartbreaking backstory- on the surface, the confessional singer-songwriter start-up kit. But he'd prefer not to talk about his heavy history even if it would make you root for him. For one thing, he'd rather not relive some of the personal tragedy (a bad breakup, a house fire) that inspired his debut, Leave Ruin. But it also would obscure the otherworldly mythology he creates on Pope Killdragon, an astoundingly original twist on the loner-folk template. He begins the mesmerizing "Sterling" like he's keeping an especially heavy secret, but Showalter is merely an observer and a confused one at that. If his lyrics are occasionally too loopy to pin down what it's "about, " they're perfectly suited for an unreliable narrator trying to piece together lost time. In the darkly comic "Daniel's Blues", he inhabits Dan Aykroyd, racked with depression after the death of John Belushi. Pope Killdragon's playfulness and sense of humor allow it a broader range of emotion than the typical sadsack folkie. Showalter did a good deal of bloodletting on Leave Ruin, and now Strand of Oaks' horizons are limited only by his fantastical imagination. - (Ian Cohen, Pitchfork, September 10, 2010)