Having produced the Ian Curtis biopic "Control," it makes sense that Todd Eckert would be drawn to Pittsburgh's Aaron Jentzen.

Not because Jentzen is a morbid, suicidal mess. Rather, Jentzen has one of those deep, dark voices that could almost pass for the late singer from Joy Division.

Best known locally as the former frontman for Chalk Outline Party and music writer for City Paper, Jentzen steps out on his own with the five-song EP "Great Inventors," produced by Eckert with an elegance that calls to mind not only Joy Division but Brian Ferry, The National and Nick Cave.

For the release show at Howler's on Saturday, he will be joined two of the musicians who played in the sessions, drummer Brian Sproul and guitarist Kirk Salopek (Mandrake Project). Jentzen says he likes to keep the musicians flexible these days. Next month, he's playing a WYEP event with Cello Fury (formerly Cellofourte) who also appear on the EP.

What does working solo allow you to do that Chalk Outline Party didn't?

Mainly, it gives me room to grow as a musician and pursue what I find most compelling without having to build consensus. Long story short, the band wasn't going somewhere I wanted to go, and I wasn't having much luck changing course. On my own, I'm able pursue a wider range of sounds and projects. Working with musicians I've admired over the years has been wonderful -- people like Dave Bernabo, Kirk Salopek and Cello Fury.

Were you looking for simpler backdrops that allowed the songs to breathe more?

Perhaps not "simpler," but uncluttered and stark. One of the goals was a kind of emotional, personal directness, and I feel like sometimes musicians pile on the fancy parts and so on to mask their vulnerabilities and insecurities. One of the songs, which might end up on the full album in the spring, is just me singing -- no instrumentation, nothing. When you have an imperfect voice, like I do, that's a very intimate, exposed feeling.

What did Todd Eckert bring to the project?

Todd forced me to re-examine assumptions I had about myself and the kind of music I could make. When you go from a fairly defined role in a rock band to no rules and no limits, other than the ones you impose yourself, a little guidance is really helpful. It wasn't always pleasant or what I wanted to hear, and sometimes he was wrong, of course, but the process of discovery was important. His main concerns were getting everything out of the way of the vocals, and creating a memorable, unique sound for each song. Having me play that battered upright piano on "People Like Us" was his idea, for example. I hadn't considered that, and hadn't tried to play piano in many years.

"Yesterday's People" has this great Scottish cathedral feel to it -- tell me about recording this song and the bagpipe playing.

Working on the song, I was looking for something to give it an elegiac cast -- something that would convey not nostalgia, but a burying of things from the past -- and bagpipes were just the right sound. Because I grew up playing the bagpipes, I have a good sense of their possibilities and limits, and worked out a four-part arrangement for them, which I overdubbed myself in my apartment. A lot of times when you hear bagpipes in pop music, it's done as a novelty, whereas I wanted to use it just as I would any other instrument.

You have this great baritone voice (which always surprises me for some reason). At what point did it develop and when did you start using it with bands?

The low voice seems to catch people off guard -- probably because my speaking voice is a somewhat higher register. It's perhaps more a bass than baritone, though I seem to have extended the upper range in the last year or two. To be honest, I never tried to sing in a rock band until I was halfway through college -- I didn't hear that kind of voice in rock, and was happy enough to play the guitar in the background. Hearing Nick Cave gave me a model for using the low voice and gave me the idea I could write songs and sing them myself in a band.

With Chalk Outline Party, I pushed my voice, trying to make it sound more aggressive or something -- who knows! With this solo music, I had to relearn how to sing with restraint -- Todd was particularly helpful in this regard.

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.