"Drawn to Dust" by Camphor (Friendly Fire Recordings) - Out now 

Perhaps “album” is not the right word for chamber-pop group Camphor’s “Drawn to Dust.” The debut CD, brainchild of singer/songwriter Max Avery Lichtenstein, has such hypnotizing continuity it can better be termed a collection of short stories set to music.

The first track, “Daybreak,” opening with a series of lush piano chords, is emotive, theatrical, and at a little over two minutes, very short. But it’s not a tune so much as opening credits, blending into the melancholy “Deconstructed,” its complex orchestration and Lichtenstein’s conversational baritone bringing to mind Pink Floyd’s epic “The Wall.” Elsewhere on the disc is clanging chaos, mariachi horns and visceral lyrics (“diamond-tip drillbit digging at the sweetest tooth”) that coalesce and trail off in the last track “Sundown.” And what an strange, beautiful day it is.

A closer look at the band reveals quite a bit. Lichtenstein, a film composer, has written scores for movies such as “Jesus’ Son,” “The King,” and “Tarnation,” and his five-member band, based in Rye, N.Y, was put together from the talent of bands like Beirut and Mercury Rev.

And “Drawn to Dust” was loosely inspired by the Japanese concept of “wabi-sabi,” which says beauty can be found in the imperfect and transient. Listen closely and you can hear the concept in action ala Lichtenstein, with background squeaks and deftly misplaced notes edging in now and again.

The result is a blend of styles and instrumentation that range from the deceptively chipper tone of “Confidences Shattered” to the mournful strings and sounds of burning embers in “Beauty in Ruins.”

But as varied as the disk is, it is impossible to listen to any of the tracks without connecting them to one another. Some segue overtly, like “Immolation” and “Beauty in Ruins,” others seem to foreshadow later tracks. In “Bones,” Lichtenstein’s gravelly voice proclaims, with resignation, “Everywhere you look are piles of bones, and everyone you meet is piles of bones.”

Dark stuff. Now listen to “Mistakes,” a few tracks later, when Lichtenstein confides, “I’m spilling whiskey and wine down your chest, but you don’t mind. I’m used to the messes you make.”

Not all lament destructive relationships, however. “Castaway” is a spellbinding pirate’s tale that pulls with the intensity of a femme fatale—“A scar and a curse from her mouth to her wrist. I fell for a castaway kiss.”

(Lyrics like these beg for a visual, and the group knows that. Check out Lichtenstein’s Playmobil adventure on Pitchfork.)

Though the CD runs just over 38 minutes, you feel you’ve come quite a distance by the time the final track comes around. So plaintive “Sundown,” with Lichtenstein’s pleas for “a world of shadow, comfort and evening shade” is an apt finale. And after skipping over the hills and valleys of human drama (imagine reading a compendium of Chekhov’s plays in 38 minutes), you could probably use a little rest.