What is it about second-generation singer-songwriters? The spawn of Bob Dylan (Jakob Dylan) and Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle (Rufus and Martha Wainwright) have produced some of the most insightful and searingly angst-ridden music of recent years. Perhaps it is the weight of expectation and need to prove oneself allied with the genetic gift of artistic eloquence that makes it easier to frame those demons in hummable couplets.

Thompson, son of Linda and Richard Thompson, is no exception. As he proved on Separate Ways, he has a wonderful way of expressing his emotional battles (with depression and loneliness) via a wry British sensibility.

Unlike Separate Ways, which charted his descent after the end of a relationship, the tone of A Piece of What You Need is more severe and unrelenting. Essentially, it is one man documenting his emotional fallibilities with the horrific realisation that he may never recover from them. As is his style, the self-indulgence is kept to a minimum.

Instead, he illustrates his self-destructive purge with either wicked glee (“I’ll sleep with anyone who gets in my way,” he spits on the opening The Things I Do) or a deadpan smile (“Life on the happy pills/ Count on Pfizer to erase our ills/ It’s working/ I’m feeling pretty blank,” he muses on the title track).

Enlisting the production services of Maris DeVries is key to taking his songs to the next level. A talented arranger, DeVries adds cinematic flourish to Thompson’s folk rock. He gives Can’t Sing Straight a circus menace, Jonathan’s Book gets skewed psychedelics, while on Where to Go From Here he adds atmospherics straight from Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk.

It all culminates with a powerful double header. The Randy Newman-style suicide ballad Turning the Gun on Myself charts life in the big city with a mixture of Taxi Driver-like paranoia and vaudeville charm. And the title track, which takes on pop moppets, bland Starbucks-sanctioned MOR and himself is self-loathing at its vengeful best. An excellent album, A Piece of What You Need should establish Thompson as one of the most important singer-songwriters of his generation.

(Universal, TMS £11.99, call 0845 6026328)

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