Anna Ash - L. A. Flame (2019)

“I’m the type of woman who profusely apologizes when I shouldn’t be,” Anna Ash sings on the bluesy “Apologies,” one of the highlights on her new album “L.A. Flame.” But as her “type” plays out over the album — the L.A. singer-songwriter’s third full-length and the follow-up to 2016’s “Floodlights” — it’s clear she’s working on it.

“L.A. Flame” is an album of uneasy victories, reluctant truces and gut-wrenching setbacks, which Ash, in her honeyed quaver, turns into truth serum, sips of which can turn you both steely-eyed and misty-eyed. The album backgrounder accurately suggests “pulling off the road somewhere between Silver Lake and Bakersfield just to roll a cigarette, kick at the gravel and brood.” The music is a mix of classic rock and Americana, as performed by a cast of L.A. luminaries such as Aaron Stern, Matthew LaRocca, Jason Roberts, Brian Whelan, Theo Katzman, Lee Pardini, James Cornelison, Elizabeth Goodfellow, Kat Myers, Gabe Noel and Dan Horne.

That we are all works in progress is the recurring theme — from overcoming the pain of lost love (“The cruelest joke is thinking that being alone is going to make you free,” she sings on the title track) to the stark recognition, in the album’s closing hymn “Required Endings,” that everything is cyclical: “There’s no arc to the story / Life’s a series of beginnings / Living it requires endings,” she sings, backed by Myers and a mournful organ.

Often, though, Ash’s songs find a strong heartbeat in the value of true friendship. In “Apologies,” she confesses: “I used to be fine being the only woman in the room / But then man, all that noise just starts to get to you / I keep dreaming that someone’s truly trying to kill me / And I wake up breathless and terrified to move / Just another reason why we keep our loved ones by our side / Cause there’s no getting out, there’s only getting through it.”