Suitcase

The simple blues-informed pop charms of L.A. songwriter Kevin Moore remain unchanged on his eighth album. All twelve of these songs about romance and its triumphs and failures go down easy, thanks to his unhurried and unmannered singing, and arrangements that run slow and spare. That openness allows Moore's slide playing, perfected on the porch of Mississippi delta bluesman Eugene Powell, to add subtle, pretty decoration to tunes like "Your Love" and "Eileen." He's got a sympathetic cohort in John Porter, who also produced Moore's debut album and is especially adept at capturing the sounds of the acoustic instruments that dominate this disc. After pursuing all the twists and turns of love and its baggage on Suitcase, Moore ends the CD with "Life Is Beautiful," an ode to the pure and basic joys of life as a couple, reflected in a blithely primal trio accompaniment of crisp acoustic guitar, mandolin, and drums. --Ted Drozdowski