Beeline
While Peter Case has previously cast himself as an Anglophile power popster (with thePlimsouls), aWoody Guthrie-esque troubadour, and aMississippi John Hurtdisciple (producing and performing on theAvalon Bluestribute album), rarely has his songcraft seemed as transparently intimate as it does here. He has plainly been absorbing some Eastern influence, both in the India-tinged percussion and drone of the arrangements and the lyrical flights of "If You Got a Light to Shine," "Evening Raga," "Lost in the Sky," and "First Light." With his cover of "Ain't Leaving Your Love," he honors the memory ofTownes Van Zandt, while "Something's Coming" (and its bonus cut remix) finds the oft-acoustic artist exploring new frontiers of technology. "You only live once or twice," he sings in the tender "I Hear Your Voice," though Case seems already to have made his way through a half-dozen or more musical lives.--Don McLeese