The British husband-and-wife team of Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish impressed even the US country music establishment with How Do You Plead?, an album of self-composed weepies that echoed the classic duets of Johnny Cash with June Carter or George Jones with Tammy Wynette. The follow‑up is even more successful because it is more varied, though it starts (of course) with a pained country ballad, Unhappily Ever After, on which they are joined by the great Kinky Friedman. The duo specialise in finely written studies of marital breakdown, but their bleakest song, the bravely agonised Ashes, Flowers and Dust, deals with the death of parents. Elsewhere, they add a dash of brass and soul to Our Race Is Run, and a Mexican edge to the bittersweet King of the Carnival, and there's a hint of reconciliation on the cheerfully upbeat Let's Be Unhappy. Original and inventive.