Along with the rest of the album, those songs arrive in skewed, disorienting form; the abrupt appearances of orchestral backup in “Answer Me, My Love” heighten the tension rather than cushioning it. On most tracks, Mr. Vernon transforms Swamp Dogg’s vocals with the Messina, a hardware and software synthesizer (devised by his engineer, Chris Messina) that can generate singalong harmonies from a keyboard in real time, a sound that pervaded Mr. Vernon’s 2016 album as Bon Iver, “22, A Million.”

Here and there, Swamp Dogg can still be heard with his unadorned voice, as a longtime soul man. But just as often, the vocals are squeezed, nasalized, multiplied, pitch-shifted or radically disembodied. Around Swamp Dogg’s voice, recognizable instruments — a guitar, a string section — are surrounded or displaced by electronic tones, fragmentary programmed beats and silences that can spring open like trap doors.

There’s a bluesy guitar deep within the mix of “I’ll Pretend,” a song about determined self-delusion after a breakup: “When the phone rings, I’ll pretend it’s you calling/to tell me you miss me and you’re coming home.” But what could have been a bluesy ballad is far bleaker. For most of the track, there’s no rhythm section, just endlessly sustained bass tones, Messina-generated vocal chorales and Swamp Dogg singing like a man hurtling toward some distant planet.

“Sex With Your Ex” could have been the jaunty crowd-pleaser its opening piano lick promises. Instead, there are looping electronic whines and whooshes, amorous lyrics declaimed in bursts of group vocals and sudden outbreaks of guitar feedback. Even when a steadier, more danceable funk arrangement arrives with “$$$ Huntin’,” the production deliberately punches digital holes in the groove, while the vocal grows increasingly processed and robotic, like someone being swallowed up in a ruthless economy.