The vinyl LP comes with a lyric sheet. So does the official CD release, on Indiana-based indie Jagjaguwar. But the prerelease doesn’t, which puts the Straight at a distinct disadvantage when speaking to the Cave Singers’ vocalist, Pete Quirk. Between Quirk’s raspy tones and his tendency to swallow consonants, only about half of the lyrics on Naomi, the Seattle-based quartet’s new full-length, are readily understood.

Not that this bothers the amiable singer, reached on his cellphone at a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, tour stop.

“Well, I can tell you that they’re brilliant and complicated,” Quirk says of his notebook jottings. “If you could make them out, you’d be spellbound.”

He’s joking, but there’s something to his carefully staged confidence: Naomi is the punchiest and most poised of the Cave Singers’ four albums. It’s also the first to spring the band out of the neofolk camp and into a more personal sound that’s part indie rock, part retro soul. It’s a blend that suits Quirk’s somewhat Dylan-esque voice, although the vintage R&B component derives more from guitarist Derek Fudesco’s secret passion for off-brand singles from the 1960s and ’70s.

“I find music can be a very spiritual pursuit, so I respond to R&B and soul music,” Quirk says. “And I get handed down some stuff that’s more off-the-grid from Derek, because he’s sort of a 45 collector. All of us love that music, but it mostly comes through Derek’s guitar-playing, because he’s sort of a novice historian of soul 45s.”

As Quirk explains, Fudesco comes up with most of the band’s riffs, and then the singer scats along until he comes up with some kind of lyrical component. “A little narrative will sort of present itself, depending on whatever kind of day or week I’m having, or whatever,” he adds.

What’s not immediately apparent is that Quirk wasn’t having a particularly great year leading up to Naomi’s creation.

“It’s sort of like a breakup record, on some level, although that sounds sort of trite,” he reveals. “That was an element of it, but a lot of it is also sort of a retooling of beliefs, I guess.

“For me, it’s like ‘Maybe part of your life ended, but how are you going to proceed from this moment?’ ” he continues. “If you step out of controlling it, life actually can be kind of beautiful. There’s kind of like a rebirth. Or it can just be dreadful, if you’re trying to hold on to things that are not going to work out, whether that’s relationships or jobs or just the way you thought life was going to go. So that’s what the lyrics are actually about, more or less.”

Well, it’s good to have that clarified. Good, too, to realize that the words are entirely in keeping with the feeling Naomi conveys, which is that however rough life can be, it’ll get better if you want it to.