Mark Olson & The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers: My Own Jo Ellen

Mark Olson's departure from The Jayhawks left the seminal Minnesota alt-country band without a crucial component, a loss from which it only began to recover with this year's revitalized Smile. But Olson has hardly been slacking in the meantime. With wife Victoria Williams and Mike Russell, he formed The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers, and the trio has released six albums since 1998, some backing Williams and some under the group's name. The latest, My Own Jo Ellen, is the first to focus on Olson's singing and songwriting, but it runs into some of the same problems as other OHRC albums. The group's casual, back-porch charm goes a long way, but it means little without songs to match, and Olson's work consistently comes up short. "Walking Through Nevada," for example, sounds lovely and finds him in fine voice, but it has all the momentum of Mt. McKinley. The title track incorporates words from a Seder service but offers nothing else by which to remember it. Enjoyable enough but far from gripping, Jo Ellen marks a welcome return to center stage for Olson, but it does little to distance him from his past. Having already lent his voice to some glorious musical moments, it sounds out of place amongst the merely pleasant material here.