In "Hollow Life," Mr. Davis even croons a vulnerable ballad melody against a choral backdrop.
A single, ballad "Us Against the World", was released in October 2008.
But approach it as an album of old ballad stories against an evocative sonic backdrop, and it's fascinating listening.
The jaunty, feel-good 2004 ballad by Rise Against paints a world in which anyone can be happy with very few material possessions as long as they have a good attitude and a song in their hearts.
Ever since its introduction by Mary Martin in the 1943 musical "One Touch of Venus," the Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash ballad "Speak Low," crooned against a softened tango beat, has been synonymous with Olympian seduction.
Time (The Revelator) (Acony), Welch's third and strongest record, finds her archivist's instinct intact: the record's title is a takeoff on the Blind Willie Johnson gospel blues "John the Revelator," and the title song is a hypnotic country-rock ballad that brushes up against Taj Mahal's "She Caught the Katy".
The first time these nations met in a World Cup final in 1986 the match resembled in outline a kind of sporting parable: systems and team play versus a lone spike of individual genius, the ballad of el Diego against the machines.
Mr. Shepp's saxophone, not to mention his ballad singing, sounds doubly wistful against Mr. Rudd's action stations' battling.
"Autumn Sun," one of several intoxicating ballads sung softly against an acoustic guitar, takes shape as a wistful reflection on her younger self before hardening into a tale of romantic infringement.
CD 1 presents the recordings of Sidney Robertson, including English-language lumberjack ballads, Finnish charms against hiccups and toothache, Scots Gaelic love songs from Duluth, and Serbian Tamburitza from "The Balkan Troubadours".
