Sacrifice (For Love)

Sacrifice... continues Greg Sage's transformation from a moderately hard-edged rocker to a pop crooner — the album's compositions are entirely pop/rock, with an entirely friendly rustic/western shuffle to them. As with Sage's solo debut, however, the surprise is that this sound is smooth and pleasant, rather than sappy or watered-down — these are the sorts of songs that probably could have conquered pop radio in the eighties, and Sage tosses them out unassumingly enough (and with enough slight modernities — "Know by Now") that Sacrifice... seems less like a bad adult-contemporary album and more like a sweet pop runthrough.