If John Mayer had any actual soul, he’d be the Seattle–bred, New Orleans–based Colin Lake. That may be an easy comparison, but it’s a hard one to resist: Both are technically accomplished slide guitar players, and both practice an easygoing, jammy style of acoustic-based blues/pop; both also mine their relationship history for song lyrics. The difference, at least in my case, is that Lake doesn’t get on your nerves after the first few tracks.

As a songwriter, Lake pursues an unlikely combination of blues grit and romantic optimism. As his bio points out, he’s a pretty fortunate guy—he met the love of his life in the airport during one of his first trips to New Orleans—so you won’t hear him griping about his life. But you will hear him exploring the dark moments that creep into even the best relationships: “If It Ain’t for You,” which rides on a swampy Little Feat–type groove, is about repenting after a rough patch. What comes through is the singer’s genuine fear that he’s blown a good thing, and the spooky distorted vocals add to the mood. On the gentler side, “The World Alive” is about the imperative of savoring life, a message he puts across with a minimum of sentiment and a maximum of nice fingerpicking.

You can tell that Lake’s kept his ears open since moving here; even without a roomful of familiar names involved, there’s a recognizable New Orleans groove (and the familiar names that do appear—Sasha Masakowski, Luther Dickinson, Maggie Koerner—make their cameos count). Some of the songs could stand to be tightened up a bit, since half the tracks run between five and nine minutes. But since Lake is a smart lyricist, you can understand his desire not to take anything out.