New Laura Cantrell

NPR Music is streaming a lot of great new albums this week. This one, by Laura Cantrell called "No Way There From Here" caught my ear.

"I'm under city lights, and it's all right," sings in one of the 12 deceptively lovely songs on No Way There From Here — her first album, besides a 2011 tribute, in nine years. The line is about a love that thrives in spite of occasional separation; its story is typical of Cantrell's wry, wise viewpoint on feminine maturity. But it also says something about this Queens-based lover of vintage Nashville sounds. Cantrell, who was born in Tennessee, is one of the stylists who defined Americana music as we now know it when she first emerged in 2000; but she's an urbanite, too, interested in expressing how the simple life gets thornier when your country dreams must adapt to the possibilities and problems of life in a metropolis.

She reminds me a bit of Tift Merritt and Kathleen Edwards.