Dunger reaches a moment of clarity and focused emotion

If a person can be judged by the company he keeps, Nicolai Dunger's trail of collaborators reveals a mercurial man.

First, the Swedish singer and songwriter recorded an album with the classical string quartet Tämmelkvartetten, and then he made a pair of discs with psychedelic rockers The Soundtrack of Our Lives. Following a stint in ambient-pop singer Emiliana Torrini's band, Dunger recorded a pair of vinyl-only projects with the Esbjörn Svenssons Trio, a Stockholm jazz group, and the classical percussionist ensemble Kroumata. More recently he's hooked up with former Flaming Lip/current Mercury Rev frontman Jonathan Donahue, and Americana cult hero Will Oldham.

If that sounds like several careers worth of material -- or material from several different careers -- consider that Dunger's musical oeuvre spans only 10 years. Before that he was a star player on the Swedish national soccer team.

''In the beginning I collaborated because I didn't have a band," says Dunger, from a train station in Baltimore. ''But I also wanted to make something challenging. I like to play with people who are really secure in their sound. They give what they have, and I give what I have."

Dunger's latest album was co-produced and recorded live in an upstate New York studio with the avant pop band Mercury Rev, and originally released in Sweden in 2004. It comes out Tuesday on Zoe Records, a pop-oriented imprint of Cambridge-based Rounder Records. The disc's title is unwieldy and off-putting: ''Here's my song, You can have It . . . I don't want it anymore/Yours 4 ever Nicolai Dunger." The music is nothing of the sort.

A decade of experimentation has led Dunger to a moment (who knows how long it will last) of lush clarity and beautifully focused emotion. He's crafted a country-soul collection that will draw comparisons to Van Morrison, above all, but also evokes a certain lineage of adventuresome troubadours: Tim and Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, and Damien Rice.

''When I was young, I made it too much complicated," says Dunger, who is not quite master of the English language. ''I listened to a lot of symphonic rock, Yes and Rush and Genesis. I still like that, but I think I like to be a little more simple now."

While some of Dunger's previous work has been available stateside, the release of ''Here's My Song" marks the musician's first concerted push into the US market. Troy Hansbrough, vice-president of A&R at Rounder and Zoe, has been a fan of Dunger's work for years, but it wasn't until he saw Dunger perform at last year's SXSW music festival in Austin that Hansbrough's attentions turned to business.

''It was hard to imagine those earlier albums appealing to a wide audience," says Hansbrough. ''Seeing him live last year with a full band playing these songs was a revelation. He can hold his own among the great singer-songwriters. That's when we decided it was time for Rounder to get involved."

Dunger grew up in Piteå, a small town in northern Sweden. He began his athletic training at the age of 4 -- his father is a soccer trainer -- and never studied music formally. But Dunger picked up a friend's acoustic guitar in middle school, taught himself the proverbial maiden cover tune, ''House of the Rising Sun," and promptly fell in love: with Kate Bush and John Cale, King Crimson and Chet Baker, Miles Davis and Al Green, and, much later, a woman whose departure translated to musical inspiration.

''My girlfriend and I broke up, and all the songs [on the new album] are to her," says Dunger. ''That's why it has that long, complicated title. There wasn't any other way to keep in touch, really."

Dunger doesn't pull punches on the disc, which includes an eight-minute blues meditation called ''The Year of the Love and Hurt Cycle." But it's his voice -- a phenomenally soulful croon pocked with cracks and aches and deep intuition -- that carries the weight of emotion. On ''Hunger," the horn-stoked first single, Dunger does desire as a frantic mash-up of euphoria and desperation. The track is irrepressible, and irresistible -- partly thanks to some well-intentioned bullying.

''We literally took Nicolai's guitar out of his hands," says Mercury Rev's Grasshopper, who first met Dunger in 1998 and invited him to join the band's 2001 European tour as opening act. Mercury Rev plans to join Dunger for his Boston, New York, and New Haven dates. ''When he strummed along, he sang a certain way, and when we took the guitar away he'd be out there naked. At first he freaked out. Then again, they were supposed to be demos, and when we got to Sweden to re-record the tracks we just kept most of them."

Dunger, who lives in Stockholm, says that this album feels like a bridge. He's traveling to American radio stations and getting pumped for another showcase this week at SXSW, after which he'll hit the road with alt-country singer-songwriter Rhett Miller for a month-long US tour that brings him to Boston on April 12. Dunger says he'd like more people to listen his music, but mostly he'd like to make more music. Dunger has four albums worth of songs ready to go. And a wish list of collaborators with one name on it.

''I really want to work Vincent Gallo," Dunger says. ''He's crazy."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com