After finally arriving at a seamless blend of pop with roots, ambient, and post-modern influences, Gregory Paul plunges headlong into his roots side -- and mortality -- on his latest disc. Delicate electronic atmospheres float over plucking banjo and rusty guitar like mist over Appalachian slopes, while Paul's restrained wail seems to carry all the history and sorrow that one imagines is soaked into the ground of that fabled setting. As inventive as it is, though, this isn't old-time music for dilettentes. When Paul sings "a grain of truth on which to stand," he sounds weary from the wisdom of knowing where we're all going to end up someday, the ground of the title. By focusing on narratives outside his own experience, Paul hits a more powerful universal chord and, ironically enough, leaves us with a most life-affirming work.