"LEACE ON LIFE," is just that, Washington singer-songwriter Donal Leace examining the way things are and aren't. His gentle tenor voice and bedrock optimism ensure that hope easily outweighs despair. Some of the songs are topical, others timeless, and all are simply and effectively arranged in a fashion that embraces everything from traditional folk and world beat to romantic pop and lightly swinging jazz. (Credit bassist Keter Betts for the irresistible pulse.) 1992.

Leace clearly aims to inspire listeners as well as entertain them, so he gathered together and craftily arranged a mixture of original songs (“Forgiving” and “What’s Wrong My Brother?”) and folk staples (“Father Along” and “The Water Is Wide”) that achieve both goals. But he’s also not averse to playing a hopeless romantic now and then, both the blessed and the bruised kind, which explains the occasional shifts from unbridled bliss (“Time After Time”) to honky-tonk torment (“Too Far Gone”).

Along the way he devises a new and wonderfully evocative arrangement of “Daddy’s Coming.” And it only seems fitting that Leace, who’s currently co-chair at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, should close the album with a brief, yearning version of Ellington’s “Come Sunday.”

– Mike Joyce