We’ve discussed this awesome Americana folkie before. Adams is the ex-leader of EastMountainSouth, whose major brag was a crush on them had by Cameron Crowe, who featured them in the movie Elizabethtown. It’s hard not to be enchanted by this approach, which amounts to a chilled-way-down, country-fied one-man Goo Goo Dolls with sedate and floaty girl singers popping in here and there to help out. As with his previous stuff, this is tuneage for perfect days, when it’s not too cold or too hot in the house, you’ve had a nap, and there’s really nothing pressing to deal with. If you’re familiar with Adams, Between Us differs from his 2008 Leavetaking and 2009’s Traces in its increase in appearances of drums and mandolin and things, as though there was a directive from on high that he start phasing out the lone-spotlight busker image. But these (mildly) louder accoutrements can’t help but be sublimated by Adams’s core exquisiteness, his intimate, stubbornly mid-American way with, well, beauty.  A+

—Eric W. Saeger