Mindy Smith/Long Island Shore: Vanguard

Touted as a kind of Norah Jones meets Patty Griffith, this is suburban SUV songster territory all the way, a kind of low-key, unblemished, saccharine music for The View crowd, folky without being folk, or topical, and washed clean by dabbling sunshine on the mind. There’s a time and place for this, I suppose, when the world is so utterly complicated that a soothing, innocuous female voice uttering (in consoling, shake’n’bake, candle-melting, miniature Zen office waterfall, therapeutic gestures) “ain’t it time we need to change” might make sense, if only bombs weren’t wailing in Lebanon and our doctors cheating us here at home. So, yes, it offers some respite from CNN, a touch of interior soul-girl reflection, white as boxed wine, but only for those who think that Joan Jett, even Alannis Morissette, is too she-devilish.

Worth one potato chip.