Not every song is brilliant, but it's a relief to know that "Ordinary" isn't a fluke. "Going Home With You" is crafty and menacing. "Hollywood" has an unexpected chord change that gets you right in the gut. The more generic-sounding "Time is a Runaway" - the actual first single - has a beautifully photographed, skilfully directed but ultimately boring video directed by Lisa Cholodenko, the filmmaker responsible for the awful "Laurel Canyon" but also the excellent "High Art." You can watch the video if you want to see what these guys look like driving around in a van, but the album is the important thing, and it's a fine achievement.

Highly recommended for adult-alternative audiences, twentysomething hipsters... practically anyone, in fact.

Listen at their Myspace page.

King Wilkie, Low Country Suite

Here's a CD that really sneaks up on you. The young band King Wilkie earned an "Emerging Artist of the Year" designation from the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2004. (The stiff competition that year included Cherryholmes.) Now, still using bluegrass instruments, the Vriginia sextet has recorded a new collection of original songs with maturity and skill. The lyrics aren't always great, and co-lead vocalist Reid Burgess will probably learn to sing with a little more subtlety. But those are minor flaws. Lovingly produced by Jim Scott, who's worked with Tom Petty and the Dixie Chicks, the CD sounds like flowers and flows like wine.

Once in a while there's a tiny bit too much flow, in fact, and the band seems to de-focus, as in "Rockabye."

Many of the songs, especially those sung by the buttery-voiced John McDonald, are fairly dark. "When the levee broke, nobody was around/You stood by watching when I fell to the ground/There's no blood on my hands, 'cause I do what I'm told/Want to live a lot longer, now I'm feeling so old," sings McDonald in the beautiful "Savannah." The songs that you could call truly fun, like "Angeline" and "Miss Peabody," are in the distinct minority. But the disc leaves you feeling good simply to have basked in the presence, for 43 minutes, of a superb musical sensibility.

The closing tune, "Captivator," begins in a sweet and low James Taylor-like mode, then kicks up into a shout-along rave-up that's sure to bring a smile to your face. Unless a motorcycle just ran over your foot.