You want songs in 3/4 time? How about seven of them out of a possible dozen? That’s how many country waltzes show up on this French-language country album, and instead of rendering the whole thing monotonous, the pervasive waltz tempos transform the album into an elegant vehicle for Bruce’s autumnal baritone singing, singing that gift wraps the gentlemanliness and warmth of Jim Reeves with the corn-tinged sentimentality of Slim Whitman. Like the waltz tempos, the fiddle and accordion of Jamey Bearb lend a touch of the exotic to songs that in cruder hands might come off hick, and like Bearb’s fiddle only more so, the weepy steel guitar of River Road’s Richard Comeaux echoes up high the melodies that Bruce sings down low. Meanwhile, lovers of paradox can relish the liner-note admission of this album’s producer, Lee Lavergne, that he and Bruce composed most of these quietly affecting songs during nothing less than an 11-hour beer-drinking binge.

–Arsenio Orteza