A Paso Fino is a Latin breed of gaited horse. It is also a group from upstate New York whose songs and style evokes the Southwest. It took me quite a while to get past the incongruence of people living in the summer-lush and winter-icy Fingerlakes region playing songs of deserts and arroyos. For a while, it seemed either dishonest or precious to pretend to be from and of a place so different in weather, geology, and culture. But both the American melting-pot and the folk process are all about transplanting and adopting traditions. Once I'd cleared that mental hurdle, this album became a pleasure to hear. (Read Gary Whitehouse's review of Paso Fino's previous album Should've Bought a Pony.)

Listening to Diana Anderson's smooth, rich, not quite sultry voice, is like stroking microsuede. She glides over Shane Lamphier's bright guitar and the Latin beat of several percussionists. It's all atmospheric -- even on a dark wet autumn day in New England, the sound transports me to a little bodega near the Cactus Plain. And those of us in New England (and presumably in upstate New York, too) can use all the heat and sun we can find.

The lyrics, mostly to love and relationships, are almost inconsequential, but they support the sound well. On "On a Cloudy Day," Anderson asks, "When I have done all that I can without/When I have tried, failed without a doubt/When I have been stripped down to the core/ Will you still love me?"

"Long Way Home"'s beat is reminiscent of a freight train, beneath the sensuality of the lyrics about touches and glances of understated desire.

My favorite song of the album is "Mercy Wine". It starts off like a spooky blues song, and the veiled story leaves the listener, like the narrator, not understanding at all, just feeling that, "Sometimes you weep/Sometimes you fall/Sometimes I think I feel it/But I don't understand it/At all, at all . . . drunk on Mercy Wine."

The entire album is about feeling, about desire and love amid a harsh but also unspoiled world.