"I'll be shocked if that isn't broken", the orthopedist said, poking, with what seemed to me to be a seriously misplaced cheerfulness, at an ugly swollen blob where my ankle would normally be found, perhaps thinking that I was busy enough trying to avoid hyperventilating from the pain that I couldn't hear her. Having registered her bet, she wandered off, and I never saw her again. I'm not sure who would have taken the other side of the wager, though, as the EMTs, the other ER personnel, the players near me who heard the pop as I fell and I were all of a similar mind, the sole dissenting voice in my unscheduled Sunday-morning tour of Norwood, Mass., medical facilities being an X-ray tech who held out, with admirable self-confidence, for torn ligaments. According to the X-rays, however, the internal components of my ankle are merely aggrieved, not broken. I was vaguely disappointed. This was the first time I'd ever been carried off a soccer field, my first stretcher ride, and my first ambulance ride, so "just a sprain" was an anticlimax, and one that made me feel self-conscious about the effort expended on my behalf.

But to think about that, I need a much sadder album than Mountains. The saddest one I have on hand (and admittedly, defining "sad" is at least half of this battle) is 2 Little Birds, the debut by Winnipeg singer/songwriter Christine Fellows, released by the Canadian label endearing (who also did one of last year's saddest albums, the Bonaduces' The Democracy of Sleep). Calling an album this reliant on slow, legato viola and cello parts "sad" may not be especially more insightful than Nigel Tufnel branding D-minor the saddest key, but we have to start somewhere. In this case, "sad" means a sort of cross between Lisa Germano, Jane Siberry, Dana & Karen Kletter and Rasputina. "20 Bullets" reminds me of Michael Nyman's music for Peter Greenaway's movies, even before Christine starts counting the bullets (although, disappointingly, she only gets to three). "Cowboy" loosens up a little, the acoustic guitars holding their own against the bowed instruments, bringing the song closer to Patty Larkin than Lisa Germano, but "Red Letter Day", despite the addition of drums and piano, is thoroughly becalmed, traces of Emm Gryner and Sinéad O'Connor creeping into Christine's voice. "Monica's Prelude" is a gorgeous two-minute piano-and-viola instrumental, but "Advice", which it leads to, uses strings and guitar to cloak a rather more grim set of self-help strictures than "wear sunscreen" ("Don't trip when your legs snap like pencil lead. / Don't spit when your teeth fall like hail."). "Ruthless" adds the eerie sighs of what sounds like a theremin, but must actually be a musical saw. "Hypothetical" reminds me of Nyman again, the viola cycling over a breathy cello drone, piano eventually joining the viola in its circuit, John K. Samson intoning a poem alternately harrowing ("Say you wake up one morning without a language, / Not lost but taken away") and plaintive ("Make a missing poster for your heart"). "2 Little Birds" itself is more forceful, like Tracy Bonham songs might sound if she wasn't trying so hard to make hers hits. "Bright Blue Flame" is meticulous and pizzicato, but in the choruses the strings turn into revving engines. Greg Macpherson takes over the lead vocals for the brief, fluttering "Fold Into June", which more or less begs for a Brothers Quay video. "Boy on the Cover" is relatively upbeat, perhaps like early Suzanne Vega updated with just a little bit of Tori Amos. And although the pedal guitar in "Small Change" lends it a slight country twinge, the song exits on acoustic guitar and piano, Christine's multi-part harmonies clustering like shy ghosts. The hidden bonus, a quiet, brittle cover of Vic Chestnut's "Guilty by Association", is more rueful than despondent, an interesting third approach to playing other people's songs to go with Mary Lou Lord's frail reductions and Tori Amos' haunted abstractions.

And once I've found my way to a more productive sadness, cheering me up becomes a formality, and most of the records piled on my desk could probably do it, but it appeals to my sense of continuity to fill out the trio with a record that seems to me to build on the other two, rather than simply capitalizing on their set-up. Lois Maffeo's previous solo albums didn't do much for me, but some advance report described this collaboration with Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty as a concept album about marriage, which I thought was incongruous enough to be worth investigating. It isn't, though. I suppose, if I squint, I can imagine that it's a concept album about relationships, but if we're going to call a pop album "concept" just because all the songs on it are about relationships, half the albums ever recorded will qualify, and many of them feature insight and/or imaginative lyric-writing, which this one, which has a tendency to cling to clichés like they're life-preservers, to me does not. But forget what the "Union" in the title was intended to mean, and never mind the lyrics, which are unremarkable at worst. To me these aren't songs about relationships, they are songs about America, a much more complicated union, and surely the stars scattered over the cover and the liner mean that Lois and Brendan are aware of this dimension. If we construe 69 Love Songs to have launched a sprawling collective project to translate all American forms of popular music into current idioms, then to me this is the series' second installment. Lois and Brendan's version of our musical history is less insular than Stephin Merritt's, less centered around musical theater and New York, more like an American answer to The McGarrigle Hour. "These Parts" combines expansive, rolling piano and chirpy acoustic guitar, Lois leaning into the fond, airy vocal as if she's channeling Liz Phair and Linda Ronstadt at once. "Being Blind" is slower and smokier, evoking for me referents as varied as Billie Holiday, Dar Williams in her pop mode, and what I imagine Lita Ford would sound like unplugged. "How I Came to Know" is galloping and exuberant, like George Harrison and Elton John filtered through Randy Newman and Rebecca Gates. "Best Believe" reminds me of Patty Larkin, "You Love Your Wounds" of Aimee Mann. Fix the they-won't-expect-this minor chords in "Hollow Reed" and it could be a classic folk song, but "Give Faith" is lilting pop on the continuum that stretches from the Bangles to Suddenly, Tammy! "Con Job" is anxious and noisier, but "Handwriting" is half bare acoustic blues, half sultry torch-song. And "Monument", which reminds me strongly of Amanda Kravat, could be the acoustic version of any of a dozen graceful pop ballads. The Union Themes hasn't anything like 69 Love Songs' scale, of course, but if we're going to assemble a library, most of it is going to be done ten songs at a time, not sixty-nine. The most thrilling thing, to me, is the notion that random people (and Lois and Brendan are, in my scheme, pretty random) are going to step forward and take responsibility for sustaining the country's musical traditions, that some of the people who once rejected these same traditions are going to accept the task of rebuilding them. Many of these songs are sad, too, but sad in the way that the cornerstone of a new house is sad, when it's laid correctly, when it settles under the weight of all the houses that stood on this lot before, and all the lives that passed through them, and all the houses and lives that will follow. And so, three albums later, nothing altered in my life but the way the air around me compresses, I've somehow been converted. I'm no longer sad that I hurt myself playing soccer and can barely operate my own house, I'm sad about all the tragedies to come that will dwarf this one, all the things that no amount of ice and pillows can help. I'm sad about the injuries, mine and yours, that will still be waiting for me when these trivial, temporary ones are gone. The swelling will go down. Everything that hurts will heal, if only to make way for more important pain. Maybe being sad about the saddest possible things isn't exactly the same as happiness, but it's close, and I think I've hopped as far as I can tonight.