Lisa Mills and Crystal Shawanda hail from different places on the North American continent. Big voices, used with affecting restraint, unite them, along with a distinctive way with blues, r&b and soul, on their respective new releases, The Triangle and Church House Blues.

I was introduced to Mills through her Tempered in Fire album, which for all its Southern rootedness (and studio excellence) was recorded in England. At the time I remarked (in my review on 18 February 2012) that sometimes an American artist has to go overseas to be truly appreciated. This time around, Mills, raised in Mississippi, living in Alabama, stays happily close to home.

In much of blues and r&b, words such as "triangle" may have more than one meaning. Here, though, the triangle that crosses the landscape to link Memphis with Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi, is geographical; it needs no under-meaning. Mills and her producer, respected industry veteran Fred Mollin (co-owner of the newly formed Melody Place label), not only revisit songs initially cut in those cities but feature local musicians as well. Mills is up against some formidable originals, among them Etta James, Little Richard and Bobby Bland, but holds her own, affirming an art nearly lost in an age enamored of singer-songwriters: song interpreter.

With the infrequent exception, r&b songs are limited to three subjects: love, heartbreak and sex, except when religious sentiments are addressed, in which case they're called gospel (represented in the current instance by "Travel On"). The album opens with the wonderful "Greenwood, Mississippi," done by Little Richard on a post-stardom album in the early 1970s, and follows it with the sexy "Tell Mama," written and recorded by Etta James. Mills takes command of a particular favorite of mine, "Members Only," associated with Bobby Bland. "That's How Strong My Love Is," an Otis Redding hit, has some dopey lyrics but works anyway owing to a decent melody and Mills's vocal skills, which -- dare I say it? -- rival the masters'.

It must be said, too, that there is nothing either calculated or exhibitionistic in Mills's singing. It projects sincerity and a warm humanity not often encountered even in the finest vocalists. Being in her company makes you feel good, an emotional state especially to be treasured in days as grim as these.

Church House Blues is a much different kind of recording. It's more modern, cooler in temperature, more distant in temperament, perhaps more to be admired than adored. Listening to them in succession is something of a jarring experience, in effect a leap across time from the middle of the last century to the present moment.

While echoes of older blues shouters can be discerned, the influences of big-voiced pop singers are more prominent. To some ears, including mine, more attuned to blues in its classical or traditional form, this is even further away than usual from the sounds that defined the genre. Still, things change even as the thread remains, in this case as a blues core surrounded by pop, rock and contemporary production styles. In short, the adjective "gritty" does not apply.

In the first decade of this century, Shawanda, who grew up on the Wikwemikong reserve (as reservations are called in Canada) on an island in Ontario, had a brief career and a hit or two as a Nashville-based country singer. She left that behind her to return to her native music scene and pursue her first love, blues. This is her fourth album in that category. It showcases her virtues, notably including a big voice intelligently employed and material that is undeniably good of kind. Some of that is akin to what might be called bluesy power-pop, at least if you're of a certain age and define blues as what you grew up with, in my case everybody from Memphis Minnie to Koko Taylor.

Even so, if you lend it your ear, you will hear the care with which Church House Blues was conceived and arranged. The songs, albeit not of the sort to which I am ordinarily drawn, attract and hold your attention. If not as warm as Mills's, the album projects its own kind of feeling and authenticity. As blues continues to evolve, one can easily imagine Shawanda as a major shaper of its future.