Writing about Jim White’s drumming is difficult. Last week, I covered Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power’s seminal Moon Pix, an album that benefits as much from her willingness to embrace her own demons as it does from Jim White’s free drumming, which exists as a counterpoint to Marshall’s controlled fury and desolate sadness.

Though he worked with Nina Nastasia before, 2007’s You Follow Me is the first record where he gets equal billing with her on the album cover. It’s a loose record, just the two of them bouncing off each other — White’s drums consistently louder in the mix than Nastasia’s guitar. Vocally, she’s throwing phrases that bustle up against each other, sometimes whooping high, other times letting her voice plummet into flat disappointment.

It’s such an intimate album that listening to it feels like an intrusion, like something you’re not meant to hear but can’t turn away from. “The Day I Would Bury You” is searing and focused. White’s drums jump from plodding to a tense roll that never breaks, with Nastasia’s voice both brittle and early-morning-hangover-fuzzy — almost weary — anchoring the piece: “I wanted to tell you again and again/ How much I blame you/ How hard this has been/ I always dreamed of the day I would bury you/ I never thought on the day I’d stop hating you.”

There’s a feeling of death hovering over everything. Never as literally as on “The Day I Would Bury You,” which is about the dissolution of a marriage. It’s also about acceptance though. And that’s the key to the record. As heavy as every song is, as intimate and unrelentingly flat as You Follow Me is, there’s optimism, too, or at least some glimmer of it.

If you’re going to make art that tackles heavy subjects, it’s not a bad idea to provide some kind of levity, or failing that, some kind of hopefulness. Making bummer jams will always be worth pursuing, but there’s got to be something else.

You Follow Me begins with “I’ve Been Out Walking.” White does a quick count off by tapping his drum sticks together, and then Nastasia’s guitar comes in, thick and as close to jaunty as she’ll ever get. It’s not a happy moment, it’s not a hopeful moment, but at least it feels free.