On Steve Dawson’s new album, Ghosts, his sixth as a solo artist, the Chicago-based musician and songwriter, well-known for the impassioned alternative country of the band Dolly Varden, crafts ten songs that find reasons to believe – in music, in human connections, in desert vistas – even as the ghosts move all around him, all around us. These ten songs combine intimate confessions and tightly constructed narratives. Their ghosts are often personal, but they intersect enigmatically with a broken world. “‘Is this really happening?’” he asks on “Walking Cane.” But there’s no clear answer to the violent changes. “Have we learned nothing? Here we go again.” But sometimes those ghosts leave gifts – of wisdom, of wonder – and sometimes living with them is also a kind of hope. “I am glad to be alive,” Dawson sings with his partner Diane Christiansen. Recorded live in-studio with a “dream band” of Chicago all-stars, the musicians suffuse these songs, some of the finest Dawson has ever written, with harmonies, rhythms, and textures that make them come alive and imbue them with hope. Dawson says, “Many of my favorite albums were recorded live in the studio. The arrangements on this new album were created on the spot, and rather than a collection of overdubs, the album is a performance.”