My listening life intersected with The Devil Makes Three on one occasion four years ago when out of passing curiosity I picked up a copy of its Redemption & Ruin (New West). I was impressed that the trio knew as much as these two men and one woman did about blues, folk, hillbilly, 1920s jazz and gospel. Not only that, but the fact that they'd found an engagingly original way of turning out America's roots sounds charmed me on the spot. A couple of spins, followed by new CDs arriving in a regular procession of new, bright shiny objects, and all that fell soon out of sight, hearing and memory.

So today I pulled the disc off the shelf. In short order, as recollection returned while I listened anew, it seemed even better than I'd recalled, a rare but pleasant experience and thus a CD to be recommended. It prepared me for the present album from DM3 frontman Pete Bernhard, another COVID-constricted musician stuck at home (late of Santa Cruz, California, he is now sheltering in his hometown in Vermont). It says here that he vowed this spring to write and record a few original songs. The result is the nine-cut Harmony Ascension Division, a low-key, un-fancy outing powered, if that's not too aggressive a characterization, by Bernhard's lead vocals and acoustic guitar, stand-up bass (Tyler Gibbons), percussion (Bernhard, Bill Esses) and backing vocals (Robin MacArthur, Margaret Bernhard).

Thus we have something like a mid-1960s folk album issued as the revival's emphasis shifted from traditional material to self-composed numbers broadly inspired by folk but devoted to personal experience. A lot of bad songs (and, yes, some good ones) have flowed since then out of that moment in pop history. In recent years some musicians have revisited the Greenwich Village songs of that era, going beyond Dylan to consider the fine work of Fred Neil, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Karen Dalton, Tim Hardin, Eric Andersen and Paul Siebel. Some singers and writers in transition, for example John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful, wandered into a kind of folk-flavored pop.

Harmony brings all of the above to mind while never forcing itself impolitely on you. It's just there, but in a good way, for you to zoom in on whatever massages your attention. "Land of Milk & Honey," which opens with a near-quote from the late Steve Young's "Lonesome, On'ry, and Mean," is as intense as anything gets here. The guitar part of "Can't Find You" brings Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt faintly but happily to mind. "Dancin'" reminds me a little of one of those magnificent early-career Gordon Lightfoot songs.

It would take a harder-hearted critic than I to complain that this isn't a major piece of art. But it's a successful minor effort, and as you listen to it, your humor will improve. In these grim times, an elevated mood is never anything to gripe about. Though welcome, the new Dylan release feels like way too much. Harmony gets it about right.