This Life We're Livin' is aptly titled. Not much here of mountain homes, none of murders or hobos or extravagant adventures and tragedies. Mostly it's the stuff of quotidian suburban life, in other words bluegrass decades past its origins and places of residence, well past the rough Appalachian traditional music that preceded it. The Aldridge sound is closer to acoustic pop than to (in Alan Lomax's famous phrase) "folk music with overdrive." It was the latter interpretation that drew me into bluegrass fandom long years ago. Even now I reflexively view departures from that stricture with suspicion, albeit more overcome-able than formerly.

Consider, for instance, "Old Fashioned" (written by Robyn Collins & Adam Pope), the kind of sentimental affirmation of the usual suspects -- flag, family, village piety generally -- it is easy to disdain as covering the sort of hypocrisy we see exposed daily in the news or in our own neighborhoods. Still, the words are connected to an irresistible, gospel-adjacent melody, not to mention Darin & Brooke's hypnotic vocals and harmonies.

It's impossible not to admire the sheer musicality in evidence. Darin Aldridge is a master guitarist, Brooke a remarkably evocative singer. Their ear for melody is rarer in bluegrass than it ought to be. Between taste and talent they're able to turn the unpromisingly titled "Blue Baby Now" (Ava Aldridge, Cindy Richardson) into something you don't mind hearing a few times or even more. It pretty much goes without saying that their approach to sacred songs is particularly impressive, whether you subscribe to the contents or not.

I'm not sure Renaissance is a bluegrass album, though bluegrass influences (along with bluegrass musicians) wend their way through the 14 cuts. The last Valerie Smith recording I heard struck me as a project that sought to modernize mountain music while retaining its flavor. I liked it a lot. The present instance does not feel like a wholesale rejection of what has gone before, but something maybe a generation ahead, opened up to vintage pop, country-pop, pop and folk in the revivalist sense.

One doesn't expect bluegrassers to evolve -- that is, to do much more than sharpen their approach from album to album -- but Smith, it appears, is fashioning a mature style of what might be called post-bluegrass. In any event, it led me to reflect that a notable part of bluegrass, including the bluegrass I love, is not functioning with a fully adult sensibility. Add to that Smith's manifest intelligence, and you have some surprisingly novel and moving songs that may point the way to a 21st-century bluegrass. Or more likely -- I hope -- just one strain of it. There's nothing wrong with the old stuff.

A closing observation:

From the title on down, to every indication this is a confessional, personal document, forged in a rough patch when she wrote five of the songs and sought out others that expressed what she felt when she entered the studio. One might be tempted to claim this is another way Smith steps away from the bluegrass tradition (and presumably toward contemporary singer-songerism), except that his biographers attest Bill Monroe penned many of his compositions from the turmoil of his complicated romantic life. In that sense Smith is just another link in the chain that leads back to the Father of Bluegrass.