Playground

Austrian singer/songwriter Georg Altziebler is the focal point of this 2006 album just as he was on Son of the Velvet Rat's 2003 debut, By My Side. His craggy, quavering delivery style makes this another exercise in Sunday morning, early winter listening; Gordon Lightfoot is one reference point, but Altziebler actually sounds like someone far more obscure, Minnesotan folkie Kreg Viesselman. The arrangements retain the sparsity of Leonard Cohen's compositions, with the band's musicianship tasteful but unimaginative in its backseat role. Altziebler's songcraft is gentle and comforting on such key tracks as "Ready to Go," "Everything's Calm (But My Heart)," and the instrumental "Snow," and there's a palpable warmth in the live cuts "Are the Angels Pretty?" and "The Sea So Blue." But his accent can be a distraction ("through the door" becomes "troo de doher" on a closing cover of Bryan Ferry's "When She Walks in the Room") and sometimes the mood slips into sleepwalking resignation (as on the limp and overlong "Blue Hair"). Still, Playground is soothing in its restraint and there's barely a weak track in this improvement on By My Side's template.