Play Time

Brady Seals came to public attention as keyboardist for Little Texas in the 1990s, and he made several well-received solo albums after his departure from that band in 1995. But it’s his Billboard Top 30 single with subsequent band Hot Apple Pie, 2005’s randy “Hillbillies,” that serves as a better entrée to his musically freewheeling and lyrically lascivious new solo album. Slighter numbers like “Ho Down” and the techno-square-dance experiment “Askin’ Questions” are bolstered by meatier fare like “Everybody Smokes in Hell,” whose central kiss-off has the grit of real bitterness behind it. Even at playtime, it’s easy to get hurt.