Though a name honored in his native Canada, Murray McLauchlan is known to most American fans of folk-based songwriting for two songs he composed more than half a century ago. They appear on Tom Rush's eponymously titled Columbia debut, released in 1970: "Old Man's Song" and "Child's Song." Intense and heart-wrenching when I first heard them way back then, they were standouts on a collection of already strong cuts by sometimes unfamiliar artists. Amazingly, the two numbers still move this listener after all these years (as in fact does the entire album). Since then, McLauchlan has continued writing and recording his own material for his fellow citizens, who have returned the favor by bestowing prestigious awards on him.

Hourglass was a welcome arrival in my mail, not something I can say for the productions of all singer-songwriters. (If ever I suspected there were too many of them, that feeling long ago transcended mere suspicion.) This is a quiet, mature effort, with simple uncluttered acoustic arrangements supporting McLauchlan's ruminations on the world's various ills: racism, economic inequality, environmental ruination, violence and -- yes -- Trump's America while never mentioning the former occupant of the White House by name. He comes across as more regretful than outraged, with an unsentimental optimism that carries him through the tragedies of our addled, awful time.

I am in awe at McLauchlan's spiritual calm and psychic patience. Even before the past few catastrophic years Canadians have had no end of reasons to be irritated, at the least, with their boisterous, self-centered neighbors to the south. So as an American who considers himself a patriotic sort, I confess that I entertained a certain amount of uneasiness as I approached a song titled "America," anticipating snark I couldn't exactly quarrel with but did not exactly want to hear either. I learned soon enough that if McLauchlan lived next door, you'd want him there, especially when you screwed up, because he's a decent guy who, while not admiring your shortcomings, wouldn't cast you into the wilderness either. Or kick you while you're down.

After six decades as a working musician, McLauchlan clearly thinks he has nothing left to prove. He puts that feeling to good use in assorted ways, mostly as a low-spoken but keen observer of what's around him, even if no physically closer than the news. He's a pro, and he hasn't been hungry in a while. Though a stranger to almost all who read these words (as well as to the one who writes them), on record he communicates wisdom, amiableness and the sense that you'd learn something, and feel generally better, if you got to hang out with him.

Unrelated to the above in any way except that he also sounds like a singer-songwriter schooled in folk music, Garrett Wieland is here only because I happen to have been listening to him and McLauchlan around the same time and enjoying them both. I had not heard of him till lately, and frankly he made no particular dent in my skeptical soul before I got around to a second and third listening, at which juncture I started hearing somebody who stylistically tipped the hat at points to Gordon Lightfoot or Townes Van Zandt, though he sounded more distinctive the more I heard. (Still, the guitar strumming that introduces the opening cut, "Resolutions," is pure Lightfoot. So, come to think of it, is the title.) Weiland, however, does have an affectingly imagined tribute to Van Zandt,"To Carry Rain," here, and he is from Texas, next to Nashville the international home of singing-songwriting.

Wieland is an able storyteller -- always preferable to the standard fixation on one's navel, an occupational hazard of the trade -- and sets most of his tales in small-town and rural landscapes, generally in our own time, though at least two ("Devotion" and "Outlaw's Farewell," the latter concerning Billy the Kid) tell tales out of Southwestern history. The arrangements, carried forth with just himself and three other musicians, are exemplary. The melodies don't seem, as they often do elsewhere, to be afterthoughts.

Overall, What Keeps the Heart Afloat is an argument for the virtues of a good ear, a watchful eye, and conscientious craftsmanship. His colleagues in the trade could benefit from Wieland's example.