Mandolinist Doyle Lawson has played bluegrass professionally since 1963, when he joined Jimmy Martin's band before moving on to J.D. Crowe's. He then spent nearly eight years with the Country Gentlemen. After that, the first album with Quicksilver entered the world in 1979.

Ever since, however often its door revolves, Quicksilver has been consistently among the finest bands in the genre. Its alumni include such leading lights of the current generation as Russell Moore, Scott Vestal, Steve Gulley, Jim Mills, Barry Abernathy and more. That's as impressive a resume as you're going to acquire in the business.

In short, Lawson has been a profoundly positive force. As much as anybody living, he has helped keep bluegrass traditional and fresh. He has recorded prolifically, and Roundtable is his 40-something release with Quicksilver. If you start with superior talent, then tour and record ceaselessly over the decades, you become effectively reviewer-proof. The most a critic can complain of is a particular cut he or she didn't like (which I will do presently), but remember, (1) that's personal taste, and (2) Lawson knows what he likes in songs and stays away from the warhorses, no small virtue. His own tastes bend toward gospel (a fair number of his albums are in that genre), a certain nostalgia for small-town America, and a sound rooted broadly in mid-century Grand Old Opry. He rarely steps beyond those boundaries. If you accept as much, you and Lawson will have no trouble.

Even so, Roundtable, which is pretty good even by his stellar standards, has at least one possible first. In my experience, I have never heard the legendary Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson name-checked in a bluegrass song, but there he is in the opening cut, Glen Duncan & Jerry Salley's "I'll Take the Lonesome Every Time," a sort of anthem for those of us who prefer our songs depressing ("sadists," Hank Williams once called us in country's most notorious malapropism). Bluegrass acts have covered the late folksinger-songwriter Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans" from time to time, but I don't recall any others; thus, it's a surprise and a pleasure to hear his witty "Between the Lines," written with Steve Burgh.

The sprightly "Sad Attack" is sung by band member Jerry Cole in a vocal that at moments brings the much-missed Doc Watson to mind. So does the arrangement, for that matter. The album gets its title because each of the five Quicksilvers has his chance to sing up front. Nobody falters, but then, of course not.

In terms of song content, only "In Those Days" (credited to Connie Leigh & Graham Sullivan) doesn't do much for me, in part because I lack the genes needed to respond to the sentimental fiction that the America of another time was so much better a place than the current one, however heavy its burdens, to live in. I guess it depends on who you are. Does one have to be told that times are mostly good if you happen to be financially comfortable and white enough? And if you imagine there was once a pure golden age in the nation's life or your own, you don't know your history, or your memory is playing tricks on you, or both.

Otherwise, if bluegrass were a shelf, Roundtable would be on the top one.