RADAR: Raul Malo - Sinners and Saints

Since dissolving his trendsetting alt-country band The Mavericks in 2000, former frontman Raul Malo has propelled his affection for a variety of influences in his music -- country, rock, R&B, jazz and Latin -- into a diverse and acclaimed solo career. Of course it doesn't hurt that Malo possesses a rapturously pure tenor vocal that critics have called "exquisite" and "exceptional" and has drawn comparisons to Roy Orbison, Frank Sinatra and country legend George Jones. Over four solo studio albums, Malo has done his share of interesting covers (06's After Hours, 08's You're Only Lonely) as well as his own material -- notably 2009's finely rendered Lucky One -- but his forthcoming August 17 album Sinners and Saints (Fantasy) is his first take on what he describes as thematically two-sided concept album.

Mostly self-written, Sinners and Saints explores the life's balance of excess and loss, failure and redemption. "It's a reflection of how I see life and that eternal struggle between good and evil and that duality that makes the world go around," Malo reflects. "That's the yin and the yang. You can't have too much yang, or it throws everything off. They have to balance each other out, and that's the overall theme of the album. That makes it different from my other albums, because I've never done a concentrated theme like that." The two covers that Malo tackles both fit into the album's theme: Los Lobos' "Saint Behind the Glass" and Rodney Crowell's 'Til I Gain Control Again."

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Raul Malo - "So Beautiful" (from the album Lucky One)