The best-ever sibling harmony duo, the Louvin Brothers sang about homicidal impulses and spiritual ones. Having revived a solo career at age 80 — brother Ira died in 1965 — Charlie Louvin plows similar fields. Murder Ballads features a scalded steam-train engineer ("Wreck of the Old 97"), a lovelorn suicide ("Katie Dear") and other doomed souls, sketched by Louvin's gentle warble and a stately string band. Louvin is releasing it in tandem with Steps to Heaven, a piano-driven clapboard-church affair that ponders where these characters may wind up. Let's hope the singer's not in a rush to get there himself.