After disbanding Margot & the Nuclear So and So's, Richard Edwards' first solo album was 2017's Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset, a notably personal set of songs informed by divorce and serious illness. Following promotion for that album, Edwards bought a fixer-upper and released a more hopeful companion LP, Verdugo. He wrote and recorded most of his third album, The Soft Ache and the Moon, over a period of two years during which he was largely homebound and making improvements to the house, in addition to raising his daughter. Co-produced by Edwards and prior collaborator Mike Bloom, The Soft Ache and the Moon maintains the dreamy, yearning quality of his prior solo work -- first track "January" was actually inspired by a recurring dream. The song opens the album with a relaxed tempo and a rolled sixth chord on guitar over piano that accompanies Edwards' breathy, tender vocals: "January came to me in a dream/Her lungs were better/And the cough was nice and clean." It effectively prepares listeners for the record's intimate and often rawly poetic lyrics to come, which include references to cigarettes, tattoos, secrets, tumbling hair, and photographs that "break my heart into little pink shards of moon rock and blow me all over Studio City." The heartbreak-themed "Monkey" ("Pull my hair/Smack my ass/Make me your monkey") offers a more fully arranged, driving indie rock but still falls under the banner of wistful portraiture. Still using a front-facing camera, "Better World a' Comin'" voices frustrations about the state of the world with a more orchestral, drum-less arrangement, including vocal harmonies that lend a female presence to this and select other tracks. The Soft Ache and the Moon closes with the lyrical "Velvet Ocean, Super Moon," a song he wrote for his daughter, adding a very personal touch to an album that came advertised as a series of "short stories." Even if parts are written in character, it rarely ventures from streams of thought and private spaces, even as lush atmospheres help carry it into the territory of broader emotion.