WILLARD Grant Conspiracy's fifth studio album began life in a jam session in Ljubljana, Slovenia and it grew and grew, like the Boston country-noir collective itself.

So much so this time that founder and bedrock Robert Fisher writes in the sleevenotes: "If someone says they play with us, they probably do!" The more the merrier, because Fisher and his rumbling, cathartic baritone is a welcome lighthouse to the storm-tossed gothic-country cargo sailing around him, be it Throwing Muses' Kristin Hersh sharing spooked vocals on The Ghost Of The Girl In The Well or Dennis Cronin's trumpet on Fare Thee Well. Traditional and new songs alike address the apocalyptic themes of death, hardship and faith under duress, and yet still the deep voice and deeper feelings of WGC revive spirits. Call it gothic gospel song.

Where Willard Grant Conspiracy's Regard The End involves a carousel of hired hands and recording spread between Slovenia and Massachusetts, NoahJohn nailed Water Hymns in one hot Chicago day. The third album of "post-modern hillbilly songs" from the Madison, Winconsin quintet is the slowest burning and most intense so far. However, even more than on 2001's Had A Burning, the tunes are reticent to reveal themselves, although Eena Ballard's viola and guest Fred Lonberg-Holm's cello freshen up the old-time country framework. The focus falls on enervated singer Carl Gustav John, the Indiana country boy who moved to the city, as he tells his small-town dramas full of wider resonance. Water Hymns requires you to look beneath the woozy surface to see what's really happening.

Updated: 10:16 Thursday, June 12, 2003