Hank Williams III channels his long-gone grandpa on his latest, “Long Gone Daddy.” (Donnie Knutson)

Album of the Week

JASON MRAZ

“Love Is a Four Letter Word”

★★

IN the follow-up to his popular 2008 album “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things” — and the monster hit it spawned, “I’m Yours” — Jason Mraz goes down a don’t worry, be happy path (complete with a Bobby McFerrin-like whistle to start off the song “Living in the Moment”).

Sounding like a cross between Jack Johnson and a less-soulful Amos Lee, the San Diego-based singer-songwriter manages to pull off a clever trick in maintaining his upbeat musical sound even when his lyrics head in the opposite direction.

In the breakup song “The Woman I Love,” Mraz tells of a guy desperate to hang on to a love who’s dumped him, self-assuredly singing, “Maybe I annoy you with my choices/Well, you annoy me sometimes too with your voice/But that ain’t enough for me/To move out and move on” — accompanied by pleasant-sounding organ, piano, guitar and drums.

Although his simple sentiments and Lite FM sound can be grating, we have to admire his ability to rhyme vibration and undulation in a song (“Everything Is Sound”).

But just when Mraz comes up with a listenable track such as the jazzy “5/6,” he follows with the maudlin love song “Who’s Thinking About You Now?”, singing: “I want to be the one to help you move from Mr. Loneliness living in the kitchen of your home.” Then he goes on: “Yes ma’am, yes ma’am/I am thinking about you.” Nothing says love like calling the woman of your desires “ma’am.”

Downloads of the Week

TRAIN

“50 Ways To Say Goodbye”

★★★

THIS new twist on the subject matter of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover,” from Train’s new album, “California 37,” is a real laugher. More malignant than Simon’s advice to “just slip out the back, Jack; make a new plan, Stan,” the California rock band suggests after a breakup telling friends things such as, “She went down in an airplane/Fried getting suntan/Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand . . .” Those farcical sentiments, combined with mariachi horns and a few spaghetti-Western guitar licks, make for a fun song.

HANK WILLIAMS III

“I’m a Long Gone Daddy”

★★★

AT 39 — 10 years older than his famous grandfather was when he died in 1953 — Hank III, as he’s known, sings a couple of Hank Williams songs on his new real-country album “Long Gone Daddy.” Although he previously recorded this song (thanks to the magic of technology) with his grandpa and father, Hank Williams Jr., on a stunt-y 1996 album by Three Hanks, he’s on his own here. The younger Williams sounds eerily like his grandpa in this country-swing song, with fiddle and pedal steel guitar adding to the grand old-school Nashville mood.