Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem - Some Bright Morning (2012)

Not so long ago, people sang about death all the time, in church and out. Death was all around — it was a different world, then — and folks made a logical choice: if you can’t beat it, you might as well sing. It’s good medicine.

Some Bright Morning, the new album from Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, is good medicine, and not just for contemplating mortality. It does, however, come bearing three sing-alongs about death: the punch-drunk, uke-powered “I’ll Fly Away,” Arbo’s hymnlike setting of Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” and the traditional “Travelin’ Shoes,” a proud embrace of the inevitable that finishes with a sustained, album-closing “Hallelujah.”...