Margo Cilker describes her third album, Little White Cross, as a concept record whose premise is “essentially that she got really sad and went to Texas”. That’s a bit of an overstatement. Several of the songs are bleak. Cilker addresses the personal costs of violence, the loneliness of grief, and what happens when love does not just work out, and other somber topics. Yet her performance has a hopeful edge. She sings as a witness, not a victim. Six of the ten tracks are covers and four are originals, but they fit together thematically. Her friend and songwriter Christy Hays wrote the title cut. The “Little White Cross” referred to is one of those homemade memorials on the side of the road devoted to someone who died in a car crash. The lyrics celebrate that the plastic…

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