If you like your love songs served up straight, free of artifice and frill, then give a listen to Laura Welland. She's chosen 12 songs from the ballad and standard songbook and presented them in a way that focuses, most naturally, on the stories they tell. Thanks to the bright, clean sound of the production and the complementary colors provided by her accompanists -- Bill Mays on piano, producer John Clayton on bass, and Joe LaBarbera on drums -- Laura discovers the simple truths and treasures in such well-known gems as "Honeysuckle Rose," "I'll Be Seeing You," and "I'm Confessin' " while also putting new bloom on tunes that we don't hear so much these days: the delightful Sammy Fain title tune (which, by the way, was introduced in the film New Faces of 1937 by Harriet Hilliard, later Harriet Nelson of Ozzie & Harriet fame) or "Be My Love," with its lush romantic lyrics by Sammy Cahn.