Do Giant Sand merit mention here? Rainer's 'Live at the Performance Centre' is one of my favourite albums ever...
Also, anyone heard Cast King? - not striving to be especially dark, just playing in the country tradition of singing about unemployment, alcoholism, murder and divorce. In fact the LP 'Saw Mill Man' is a bit irritating because he seems to have sat down and said 'okay divorce - check, song about my devotion to wine even though it's killing me - check, reference to being alone in cheap hotel - check' I let him off because he's around 900 years old (he did some songs for Sun in the 50s then vanished) and on the whole it's a pretty good album.