After Yesterday

John Gorka's eighth album marks a return and a departure. He's back with his original label, the flourishing indie Red House. He's also a new father, and the pleasures and revelations of family fill these songs. Gorka can be giddy and tender, as on the brief lullaby "When He Cries," in which his infant son looks "like Charles Bronson when he cries." Elsewhere, he's a bit pious, his warm baritone forcing lessons on the listener. "After yesterday / We can live here together / After yesterday/ In sunny and the other weather / We're closing in on forever," he sings on the title track. Gorka has been an essential post-Dylan singer/songwriter partly because he has avoided such new- agey ponderings. He slips a bit on After Yesterday, despite the lightly lush Americana accompaniment of John Jennings and Peter Ostroushko, and the fine imagistic litanies of "Thorny Patch" and "Silvertown," which recall his strong, still-hungry early work. -- Roy Kasten