Parsons Green, Birds of a Feather (1988)

If you’re going to go the adult contemporary route, you might as well have the courage of your convictions. Closing an album with a four-minute a cappella “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” (by Richard Farina/Sandy Denny), well, that counts. To get there, we listen through everything from Jimmie Rodgers to Donovan, all flattened into the same politely pleasant folk/country/bluegrass hybrid sway. Gene Parsons allows himself one homespun instrumental as on the solo LPs of old, and Meridian Green keeps herself restrained and kinda dull (her rare almost-guttural moments fall well short of what, say, Alannah Myles was doing at the time; feral, they are not). They seem pretty happy together—if you don’t pick that up from the cover, she’s “cooing like a dove/I’m so in love with you” on track 2 to remind you. Upon the release of this album, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy probably threw up on one another in protest.