I'm beginning at the end/There is a story I must tell and not pretend," sings Richard Barone at the onset of "Within These Walls." Barone, whose pure pop voice graced tuneful confections with the now-defunct Bongos, takes a noticeably downcast turn on this album. Dedicated to music journalist Nicholas Schaffner, who died of AIDS in 1991, Clouds Over Eden, even at its most celebratory, is haunted by the ongoing pain of the dying.

By keeping the lyrics open-ended, Barone lets the listener decide how much to take on. When he sings, "Clouds over Eden/And waiting for the rain/With so much to be lost/And nothing left to gain," he's either speaking of a personal situation or for the many lives that see no way back to their normal routines of living – or, more likely, for both.

Musically somewhere between the hypnotic chamber-pop of Cool Blue Halo (1987) and the slicker bombast of Primal Dream (1990), Clouds Over Eden allows Barone to bask in emotion through some tasteful orchestrations of cello, French horn and string quartet and to work through his suffering with unfettered velocity. Paradoxically, he delivers many of the songs' homilies with his usual cheekiness and verve – "I'm looking for a beautiful human," he states in one song. Even the songs that have no relation to AIDS – such as "Miss Jean," which Barone co-wrote with Jules Shear – share a reticent tone, giving the album a consistent, if understated, focus.

Shorter on concept but steeped in tradition is Tonic. Named after Hank Williams' 1949 radio program, the Health and Happiness Show – led by Barone's former partner in the Bongos James Mastro – combine country's penchant for sloshed-up losers with Irish music's defiant, inebriated pride. The result is music that confesses its sins while slipping out the back gate to party. Though Mastro writes the songs, the band's versatility brings them fully to life. Kerryn Tolhurst switches among mandolin, lap steel guitar, tiple and dobro, while Todd Reynolds fires up his fiddle until the music climaxes.

Against this backdrop, Mastro tells the story of a man who, smitten by love, sees his femme fatale "Slip behind the hill/Just always out of reach/Leaving him stranded and washed up on some beach" ("The Man Who Married the Moon"). On "Sinner's Lullaby," a man delivers his song, and his lover "falls asleep to the same old lies."

James Mastro evokes a time in which the rules of the game were clearer, even if the outcomes were as unpredictable as always. Richard Barone faces today's truly scary shit. One's a little bit country, the other a little bit rock & roll. But on these two heartfelt albums, they're both on the mark where it counts. (RS 675)

ROB O'CONNOR