When Ween broke up, in May of 2012, it seemed like a unilateral move on the part of Aaron Freeman, a.k.a. Gene Ween. Freeman announced the band’s dissolution in a brief interview with Rolling Stone. “It’s time to move on,” he said. Months later, his bandmate and fictional sibling, Dean Ween (Mickey Melchiondo), still seemed surprised by the news. He told interviewers that the end of the band had come out of nowhere, that he didn’t really understand Freeman’s need to declare an official end, and that he would have been happy to just let the band sit on the shelf until both of them were ready to record or tour again. The general sense surrounding the end of Ween was one of crisis and confusion, a big “What gives?”

What gave, apparently, was Freeman’s sense of self. For years, he had struggled with drugs and the other pressures of fame; hanging up his Gene Ween costume seemed to be a move calculated to improve and possibly extend his actual life, not to mention his artistic one. When Freeman ended Ween, he was in a period of flux, to say the least. The previous fall, he had “a typical meltdown with drugs and alcohol” at a show in Vancouver, which led to a rehab stint in Arizona. Weeks before the breakup, he released a solo album, “Marvelous Clouds,” which was weird even by Ween standards, in that it wasn’t particularly weird at all. It was a straightforward set of covers of songs by the songwriter and poet Rod McKuen. The album didn’t deliver the comic mashed-up genre exercises that were central to Ween’s appeal. It didn’t offer a twisted look into the fractured psyche of a burned-out performer and recovering addict. It was just Freeman, singing soft rock, and, while it was pleasant enough, it felt somewhat generic.

Freeman’s second solo album, “FREEMAN,” the name of both the album and the act styled in all-caps, fixes that fast. The first song, “Covert Discretion,” has the same feel as the McKuen songs, but the lyrics go directly to the heart of his addiction. It’s worth quoting them at length to give a sense of their brutal, bruising self-examination.

Covert discretion in the hotel room

Ain’t it always the same?

Another gig now, got an aching head

And I’m back on display

Ain’t no thing now, all the fans are green

We killed it tonight

Back at the hotels, watching CNN, still scared for my life

So where is the party going on?

It’s no fair to make me stay alone

Down in the lobby there’s a couple left

Have ’em buy me a round

I’m your best friend, I’m your superstar

Yeah, I’m down with the brown

We in the bathroom let’s be super cool

You got a little bit left

What a special thing, I’m your trophy boy

Get the fuck out my face

’Cause you will go home satisfied

I’ll be blacked out for the night

Freeman sings beautifully—gentle, delicate, always pulling a bit against the despair of the material—and then, at the end, after two lonely verses, he erupts into a fierce chorus, which he repeats a half-dozen times:

Fuck you all, I got a reason to live

And I’m never gonna die

“Cover Discretion” is a shock as an album opener, and a completely successful one—it banishes the sense of pointlessness that hamstrung “Marvelous Clouds,” and it moves briskly past the shenanigans of Ween.

The move toward normalcy, such as it is, has thematic benefits as well. Ween used style parodies, whether Prince, country, prog, or the Beatles, not only to show off their songwriting abilities but to hide their insights behind a screen of signifiers. It’s the same reason they used profanity and scatology and stoner comedy; they were like an unholy cross between Weird Al Yankovic and “South Park.” Here, Freeman is less strange on the surface but stranger deeper down: he’s probing the incomprehensibility of his real life. That produces both confessional moments and mystical ones, such as the sweeping “El Shaddai,” which looks back to confessional songwriters like Al Stewart and Cat Stevens. “El Shaddai” includes an army on horseback, which marks it as one of several songs about Freeman getting back on the horse, literally or figuratively. The album is unashamed about dramatizing a healing process. Throughout it, Freeman acknowledges that he was sick—sick of fame, sick from drugs, sick from boredom and the expectations of others—and that he returned to music, in part, to help himself get better.

“FREEMAN” doesn’t always maintain its altitude. There are songs that are a bit precious and self-consciously quirky, and others that borrow styles without thinking through their musical limitations. The arrangements can sometimes feel like soft-rock exercises rather than productive subversions. But the album moves forward, propelled always by wonderful singing and sharp writing.