True Detective’s unfairly maligned second season features the Nashville-based singer/songwriter Lera Lynn sitting in the middle of a vacant stage in a bar buried in a dark corner of Vinci, a fictional rendition of Los Angeles. Slightly hunched, with a guitar slung over her shoulder, Lynn’s unnamed singer is the show’s ethos channeled into a single tertiary character. This singer looks perpetually strung out, eyes glazed over and teeth yellowed. The central song to this second season of True Detective’s soundtrack, which Lynn co-wrote with Roseanne Cash, is called “My Least Favorite Life”, and the lyrics match the unrelenting bleakness of the series itself. “A lifetime goes up in smoke,” Lynn sings, the beauty of her voice cutting through the sorrow of her tune. The lead characters played by Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughan turn to the singer, recognizing her lament as theirs, too.