Stupid Love.

I’ve mentioned this before, but country singer Mindy Smith is actually a former classmate of mine – from second grade on through high school. I’d lost touch with her after we graduated but we reconnected a year or two ago when I found about her music career and contacted her manager, who sent me a copy of her newest album, Stupid Love, which came out earlier this week.

This isn’t ordinarily my style of music, but I did really enjoy the album beyond just being supportive of an old friend. The album runs about half-and-half between upbeat, folky-alternative songs and mournful ballads, with the former making more of an impression after my first listen than the latter, which required a few more spins for me. The first single, “Highs and Lows,” and the opening track, “What Went Wrong,” both would fit on an alternative rock station’s playlist; “Highs and Lows” sounds a bit like a lost David Gray track, while “What Went Wrong” is more power-pop along the lines of Jellyfish or the Primitives with a folk influence. The album’s closer, “Take a Holiday,” will probably pop up on half a dozen soundtracks over the next few years – it’s a closing-credits kind of song with a shuffling beat and a repeated lyrical gimmick of rhetorical questions asked by someone who’s hit a rut and can’t quite get out. The ballads are more of a mixed bag; the duet “True Love of Mine” has (non-cheesy) wedding song written all over it (and lo and behold, her duet partner Daniel Tashian sounds a lot like … David Gray!), and “Love Lost” does a great job of showcasing Smith’s sharp, smoky voice, but “Disappointed” feels underproduced and harsh and the ship metaphor in “Telescope” seemed a bit hackneyed to me.

The best part about this album, at least at the moment, is that you can download the whole thing for $3.99 at amazon.com. I doubt that’s the permanent price, but the discount has Stupid Love #2 on amazon’s mp3 album charts. I’m not sure how much of my audience is into this kind of music – anything from straight country to Sarah McLachlan – but I’ll offer a cheerfully biased recommendation that you give Stupid Love a shot.