Too squarely country for my taste, opening track Everybody Sings in Nashville made me cringe. Thankfully, it’s immediately followed by the soulful Best Thing, which instantly seduced me with its great organ lines and sexy groove. Throughout the rest of this fifth album, Ann Vriend continues to swing back and forth between the trite and the sublime, between front-porch ballads and juke-joint rhythm and blues. And then you get refreshing oddities like Graffiti on My Heart, which overflows with New Orleans jazz/Gypsy band flourishes and culminates with a crowd repeating the refrain "You must not love," and Somebody on the Ground, the beautifully gospel-tinged album closer. Love and Other Messes is uneven for sure, but the highs make up for the lows.