RAY BONNEVILLE has just released Easy Gone.

On this, his fourth Red House Records album, Bonneville delivers 10 reasons why patience pays off. In each, his guitarwork shimmers like stars emerging at dusk. His voice carries the rich, natural timbre of time, though underneath that pearl-like smoothness, one hears its gritty core. His harmonica rhythms add even more texture to his sound.

Produced by Bonneville and Justin Douglas, Easy Gone wears the faded denim of a man who knew when he “said I do to a highway,” as he sings in “Who Do Call the Shots,” that it wasn’t going to be an easy marriage. But he also knew divorce was not an option, and affirms his vows in soulful lyrics that balance thoughtful observation, impassioned emotion and the restless soul of a wanderer.

Bonneville headed to Austin in 2006, and released Goin’ By Feel, his second Red House album. Allmusic.com gave it four stars, the same as Gust of Wind, Roll It Down and Bad Man’s Blood — which it calls his “magnum opus,” noting, “With darkness and light fighting for dominance … he’s stripped away every musical excess to let the songs speak for themselves.”

“I have roughly 12 lines to make a story, so every one has to trigger the listener’s imagination,” he explains. “I want my songs to be believed, so I work on them until I believe them myself.”

On Easy Gone, songs like “When I Get to New York,” “Mile Marker 41” and “Love is Wicked” percolate with hints of something sinister and sexy. In the bluesy “Wicked,” you can almost hear the finger-poppers lurking in the club’s corners — the ones who might get a little wicked themselves later on. Even the album’s lone cover, of Hank Williams’ classic, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” carries a groove and momentum that’s Bonneville’s alone. It’s haunting, like many of his songs. He populates a lot of them with society’s fringes: the desperate and dangerous, damaged and vulnerable.

“I like the criminals and the lost people,” he says. “That’s why I love Flannery O’Connor and those kind of writers. ’Cause I’m lost myself.”

Whether that’s true or not, he knows how hard it can be for our internal compasses to lock on the direction in which we might need to go. That’s the subject of “Where Has My Easy Gone,” written with drummer Geoff Arsenault. In it, he sings, In the heart of a seeker a needle swings/homing on some elusive thing/I looked in the endless sky down along the sea/I could not find my easy.

With just a few simple words, Bonneville clearly expresses his thoughts, while allowing space for multiple interpretations. Which, of course, is the essence of great songwriting, the kind that earned him an International Blues Challenge solo/duet win in 2012. He doesn’t pretend to understand how he finds that essence, however.

“The whole songwriting thing, to me, is mysterious, and I want to keep it that way,” Bonneville says.

Ultimately, what matters is knowing how to translate the mystery into music, and that, he understands perfectly.