Available with extended clips at CD Baby.

Nathan Angelo, Through Playing Me

If you're a fan of blue-eyed soul, Atlanta's Nathan Angelo is well worth a listen. Hitting the piano like Randy Newman, working his smooth vocals and flowing melodies like Stevie Wonder, crafting dense arrangements like Don Henley, and wrapping emotions around emotions like Kevin So, Angelo has a timeless adult sound that could find a wide audience. As you move through this long CD, great songs like the wry, bouncy "Love Sucks" and the epic title track give way to some in which wall-of-sound bombast threatens to outweigh substance, but even the weaker material is interestingly complex and sweet to listen to. The dramatic "Leigh," for example, seems to owe something to Coldplay, and "Road Home" is pretty even if there isn't much to it. In songs like the romantic "Someday Soon" and the verging-on-prog-rock "Twilight" Angelo and his collaborators create entire little worlds.

He doesn't have the vocal power of some of his predecessors in the genre, but he's got good control and seems to know, for the most part, how to make the most of his instrument, which includes a supple falsetto. The lyrics, which deal with common themes, are well crafted to fit the music, gluing together common images, terms and phrases with just enough art: "It gives us hope/It gives us faith/That life won't always be this way/To change the world/To seize the day/Dreams don't have to fade away." And he and his co-writers do get more inventive at times, as in "Mary Poppins' Birds" which is about getting ahead versus what's really important in life: "I cannot forget about Mary Poppins' birds/Haven't you heard/They need some food not just smiles and words... Everytime I think about it, Mary Poppins' Birds/Reminds me of the words, 'you gotta give to love' y'all." Amen, brother.

Available at the artist's website.

OUT AND ABOUT: Your intrepid reviewer is taking the music of Whisperado on a mini-tour to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York this weekend. Wish me luck on my first ever solo tour.