ALBUM REVIEWS : ** 1/2 Jack Logan, “Mood Elevator,” Medium Cool/Restless.

Like most of this album’s songs, there’s a double edge to its title--a pharmaceutical that lifts the spirits, or a closed chamber that takes you up and down.

This Georgia-based grass-roots discovery and his band Liquor Cabinet play music that’s buoyant and robust, a blend of garage intensity and pop dynamism overflowing with hooks. Logan fronts it with a droll voice cut from Costello/Hiatt cloth.

But his lyrics are as close and claustrophobic as his music is expansive. Logan’s songs are often less than sketches--just quick strokes full of suggestion and mystery. In “Ladies and Gentlemen,” a man approaches a podium with a message that will change his listeners’ lives--and the song ends right there, before he delivers it.

The character that gradually emerges is spiteful and weak, someone whose life has virtually shut down. He’s frequently flat on his back, from defeat or liquor or both--never more so than in a finale that could be spoken up to a graveside visitor:

With the help of the unforgiving sun

Cast your shadow down on me. . . .

This is an enigmatic, creepy and evocative ride. Going down?

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).