Mandolin player Ashleigh Graham combines bluegrass, gospel and country-pop into a contemporary approach that smooths most, albeit not quite all, sharp edges. Actually, the more often one listens to it, the more one hears (or may think one is hearing) at least hints of a deeper hillbilly sound. Even so, there can be no doubt that it's the kind of recording you might share with a friend who, if not a bluegrass fan, may have some modest curiosity about the genre but whom you don't want to scare off.

Those of us who know our bluegrass will recognize Graham as an able practitioner who has taken a good part of her inspiration from the softer sounds of commercial radio, happily without the excessive, soul-deadening studio production that typically accompanies it. The harmonies, however, never come packaged with the adjective "mountain," and the lyrics are sufficiently easygoing not to roil anybody. While I doubt that these were anything close to the sounds Bill Monroe sensed massing when the first echoes of what one day would be called bluegrass grew audible in his distant imagination, that's all right. Nothing can be more pointless or tedious for a form of music to reiterate its creator's vision endlessly. By now, too, there's nothing all that radical about what Graham is putting forth.

Still, at some point music may be played on bluegrass instruments (guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, bass) without being bluegrass in a recognizable sense. That destination is reached occasionally, in my hearing, even by bands that call themselves bluegrass if only because they seek continued festival gigs.

If we're not hearing that extreme in Ashleigh Graham, we're getting at least some clear sense of a sound in transition. Since its inception on the stage (figurative and literal), bluegrass has been known as a development from the fusion of Appalachian folk music and the mid-century Grand Old Opry. A fair amount of it remains so. As the genre moves along in its inevitable evolution, some more resembles an acoustic variety of Nashville hits from the 21st century -- in other words love songs, uncomplicated stories and celebrations, and nods to Jesus. That's how I'll Just Drive sounds to a listener, for example me, who's been around rural-based music, real and imitated, most of his earthly existence.

If your taste encompasses the smoother stuff as poured by someone from whom it is the most comfortable musical libation, Graham's will go down without drama. If you prefer the harder stuff, you probably expect the bite passing through your throat to be a part of the pleasure. But we latter imbibers should show the good grace to concede that Drive and its like will be taking up more and more of the joint as bluegrass moves farther and farther from the outlying reaches that gave it birth and name.