New and noteworthy

The Country Side of Paul Carrack, Volume 2 

Paul Carrack

For the second time in two years, the Man with the Golden Voice comes to terms with his golden years by applying himself to 32 minutes of pretty much classic country. The main difference this time is that, for better or worse, Carrack hasn’t leavened the proceedings with any of his own compositions, leaving the material—composed from 1934 to 1977 and made famous by singers with less golden but therefore more distinctive voices—to map out the emotional and, in the case of “When God Dips His Love in My Heart” (and maybe “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal”), spiritual terrain. Mellifluous yes, definitive no.

The Air That You Breathe

Lance Cowan

Album three from this Americana publicist turned Americana artist proves his first two weren’t flukes. He co-wrote the heartbreaking divorce song “When He Was Here” and the bracing death-of-a-friend song “Closer to Truth” in the ’90s. He co-wrote the subtly anti-deportation song “Where’d They Go” and the bracing anomie-is-the-​mother-of-desperation song “The Road” more recently. “Love” is about more than its title. Any resemblance, meanwhile, between the title cut’s subject (a singer-songwriter whose hair turns gray before he gets the attention he deserves) and Cowan himself is purely coincidental.

Four

Lake

Fifty years after their major-label debut, four of this band’s six classic-lineup members are back with a new lead singer, one old one, the great Kenny Aronoff on drums, and an album of what’s nowadays often called “yacht rock.” Smooth, breezy, and a little melancholy, with layered background vocals the absence of which is perhaps contemporary pop’s most glaring deficiency, it’s less about proving Lake’s still got it than about suggesting Lake never really lost it in the first place. Due in part to COVID, it took almost seven years to make. The time was evidently well spent.

Satisfied: Country Gospel Classics Live 

The Malpass Brothers

Take a good look at the cover because, from the Opry-like curtain to the smiling fellas in vintage Western suits, what you see is what you get: 19 country-gospel favorites (plus a Malpass original) sung and played the way the Louvin Brothers (who recorded seven of them and composed five) would’ve. The oldest of the 19, “In the Garden,” turns 114 this year. The newest, “Ragged Old Flag,” turns 52. Cultural preservation at its most precise and an appropriate 250th-birthday greeting to the material’s country of origin.

Lake Facebook / Lake Band

Encore

The German-British sextet Lake’s failure to break big in the U.S. (and anywhere else but Germany for that matter) remains a mystery. “Time Bomb,” an uncharacteristic but catchy single from the band’s self-titled 1977 debut, only made it to No. 83 despite combining falsetto vocals and novelty sounds (an ominous ticking in Lake’s case), both then in vogue, and enjoying heavy-rotation airplay in certain markets. Stranger still, the band’s prog-lite, Doobie Brothers–Steely Dan blend seemed tailor-made for FM.

It may be that Lake simply arrived too late. Besides competing with its aforementioned influences, it eventually had to contend with MTV, which overnight made acts with pre-punk roots seem ancient. The group called it quits circa 1986, and in 1991 its lead singer James Hopkins-Harrison OD’d on heroin. His death seemed extra tragic in light of “Jesus Came Down” (from Lake) and “Lost by the Wayside (Lake II), songs whose lyrics he wrote and that suggest a curiosity about and openness to the gospel. —A.O.