With downbeat colors and the lurid Naked City imagery of Depression-era painters like Reginald Marsh, Owen Smith is single-handedly reviving the venacular style of a coarse and brutal America only glimpsed now in the HBO series Carnivale and the shadowy neo-noir film Sin City. His painting “Don’t Ask” (above) is typical of his sweaty, narrative style. Here two male groups are in collision, the grossed-out soldiers clearly overwhelmed by the larger figures of a fleshy gay couple, one of whom looks back with an easy air of desire — but more than that, of challenge.

It’s a provocative switch, gay men taunting rather than taunted.

Come this Tuesday, pop culture will get a direct hit of Smith’s art when it appears all over a new Aimee Mann album, The Forgotten Arm. Unlike the soundtrack she composed for the film Magnolia, Mann has created music here for a film she’s only screened in her head. Thankfully, Owen has illustrated the plot of this imaginary movie in a special booklet that accompanies the album when it’s ordered from her website.

The Forgotten Arm tells the story of a broken-down boxer and the hard luck girl he picks up at a state fair — perfect subject matter for Smith who has done an entire series on boxers (below), one of which appears on the album’s cover. Arm takes its name from the knock-out punch that sometimes ambushes a boxer. It works like this: Pinned against the ropes, the fighter is being pounded from the right and never sees the left hook coming.

Mann has constructed the sonic heart of the album to echo some of her favorite 70’s albums and artists — namely Mott the Hoople, Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection and Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story. You can play the entire album on Mann’s website and hear the 70’s flourishes throughout.

What remains distinctly Aimee Mann, is the tart, intelligent, double-entendre songwriting. Her only peer, lyrically, is the Cole Porter of pop, Elvis Costello.

Nice company in the ring.

You’ll find further information on Owen Smith at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery