Record stores are bought and sold on broken hearts. Misery sells - and inspires - so it's to be expected that when a musician goes through a breakup, what follows is the spleen-venting, gut wrenching breakup album. There are millions of them.

Toronto singer/guitarist and visual artist Kurt swinghammer dropped a wicked variation on that theme with his new Black Eyed Sue disc, released on his own Cultural Engineering imprint. And he's upped the ante for brutal honesty.

Swinghammer was obviously wounded when a seven-year relationship ended. But Black Eyed Sue - feted during a May residency at C'est What and complemented by a set of paintings Swinghammer created to exhibit at the gigs - chronicles an affair that ended seven years ago.

"I just wanted to honour this experience I had in my life. Art helps you to externalize things and heal," Swinghammer offers. "I didn't ask for it to happen this way. The subject was just triggered and I began writing about it. To not write about it seemed like denial."

The timeline isn't the only thing setting Black Eyed Sue apart. the disc's gentle, acoustic folk-pop songs detail, in precise language, such wildly personal things as an abortion, elevator erections and a gang rape while pausing to point out exact geographical spots in the city (and abroad) where certain events took place.

But while Swinghammer's obsession with a past affair seems kind of creepy, his defence, outlined over cool drinks in the garden of his Kensington Market home, makes sense. Too many singer/songwriter records, he says, lack bite.

"These are delicate subjects, and I wasn't sure they were suitable for public consumption," Swinghammer offers of the disc, which he wrote, produced and arranged at his home studio. He's abetted by guests including bassist Maury LaFoy, cellist Mike Oleson and singer Mia Sheard, whose porcelain voice brackets the album's 13 songs.

"I've always believed exposure to good art makes you a better artist. Prior to writing this, I toured with Ron Sexsmith, and watching him play 30 amazing songs every night totally inspired me. So I was primed to kick ass with some good writing."

It's easily his most gripping, powered at once by stark imagery, Swinghammer's unblinking delivery and a cast of tremendous players who add economical but affecting swooshes of violin, recorder, flute, and accordion.

Copies can be scored at www.maplemusic.com and at the gigs.

And has the former flame heard it?

"She has," Swinghammer says. "She was a little flipped out, but in a good way. I kind of just left her with the CD," he chuckles. "I didn't want to be sitting beside as she heard it."

"But she sent me a note saying I had expressed things that were inside her that she didn't even know I was aware of. She said she wished she had an artistic outlet to express her feelings."

A Canadian has just undergone the most complex space-station mission in history and a Yankee tycoon bought himself a $20 million seat on a Russian shuttle, but Kurt Swinghammer has come back to earth.

With 1999's Ani-endorsed Vostok 6, the local art-pop institution invested years of studio tinkering into a stirring collection of sci-fi lullabies - a love story starring cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova - that made the cold isolation of space as romantic a backdrop as a fireside snuggle at the cottage.

But where Vostok 6 made the otherworldly feel natural, Swinghammer's new, more intimate opus, Black Eyed Sue, makes the familiar seem exotic, casting the (autobiographical) tale of a doomed affair on Queen Street in a fairytale fantasia.

"With Vostok, I was using a story that didn't have a whole lot to do with my life, but I was using it as a metaphor for personal stuff," Swinghammer says. "One of the constant things in my writing is peppering it with references to my immediate environment.

"I just thought I'd do something quick, with the focus on songs instead of soundscapes. But there's definetly some careful crafting on Black Eyed Sue - though hopefully it's transparent enough that people aren't thinking of Yes of Gentle Giant."

At the very least, Swinghammer can rest assured that no one will mistake Black Eyed Sue's cover for a Roger Dean prog-portrait. In fact, the muted painting of the album's floral namesake is also atypical of Swinghammer's past work on the canvas, shunning the gonzo, eye-popping aesthetic he's soaked our city in for the past 25 years.

"The flower has this weird name of an abused person, and that's unfortunatly one of the themes of the lyrics," he relates. "I actually paid my way through college doing realistic work, and these paintings are the first objective work I've done in a long time. My work is usually either really graphic or primitive or abstract, so this makes for a funny reconnection with my past.

It's time for the artist to give people incentive to buy an actual record. I'm doing a 20-page colour booklet for this album, and it's really expensive, but it creates an object. It's a response to the whole MP3 thing. You've got Iggy Pop and Barry White doing commercials for Macintosh, saying, "Burn this shit," but who cares about a burned CD when you can have this beautiful thing in your hands?"

The latest release from visual artist/singer-songwriter is a heartbreaker before you even get it on the CD tray. There's that title, inspired by the a wildflower which, as Swinghammer later implies, represents an abused woman. An original painting of a black eyed Susan flower stares out unblinkingly from the disc's cover like a wounded but still confrontational eye.

Then, from the moody intro sung by Toronto's Mia Sheard - Swinghammer pours out a non-fictional account of a long finished love affair with a person who clearly came into his life as a wounded soul, and for whom he obviously held, and holds, a tremendous sense of empathy.

In an interview this week, Swinghammer confirmed that Black Eyed Sue was written about a relationship that ended seven years ago.

He plays a series of shows at C'est What tomorrow and May 20 and 27.

"I was a little surprised that I hadn't written about it until now," the singer-guitarist said. "I actually wasn't intending to do an album when this started. I had four or five songs, and the next thing I knew, I had the whole thing. It was all written in six or seven weeks."

The singer confessed that his memories were so vivid that even his newly assembled backing band have complained that the songs are "too draining" to play.

But while Swinghammer's intimate details can be harrowing at times, Black Eyed Sue is not a total downer.

With downtown Toronto as a landscape, there's a warmth and familiarity to cello-laced tear-jerkers such as Bartlett Street and No One Knows, and the strange, Association-style swing of The Signature Of Marilyn Churley. With subtle electronic drones humming in the background, Camouflage and Bathurst Flat take on a relaxed, Bossa Nova feel without trying too hard in the process.

Anyone can make a break-up record when the break-up is fresh. Swinghammer was smart to let his ferment first.

For info, visit www.swinghammer.com. Recommended for fans of: Richard Buckner, Ron Sexsmith, Giant Sand.