Where do "creepy" and "soothing" meet? Like Cass McCombs, John Southworth has found hospitable grounds for these competing ideas in Laurel Canyone folk-rock, which can sound beautiful and benevolent one second and unsettlingly medicated the next. "Ode to the Morning Sky" puts his gentle, dulcet croon over a warm corona of acoustic instruments—guitars and grand piano and pillowy backing vocals. It's a gorgeous sound, but there’s an unreal tinge to it, something that Southworth echoes in his lyrics: "There is gold in the desert that has gone unclaimed for so long, now it’s gone." "Ode to the Morning Sky" manages to feel familar and comforting and vivid and strange, all at once.