“They say the earth came from chaos/And lightning, hail and rain/The sea, they say, is a pool of tears/And a song is a poet’s pain.” And so Joe Ely opens Love in the Midst of Mayhem: a little wisdom, a little wonder, a little bit of grit. Released into the global confusion of the coronavirus pandemic (or “pan-damn-it”, as Ely has taken to calling it), Love is, as its title suggests, a bid for kindness and clarity in a moment when both feel nearly beyond grasp. At 73, and 19 solo albums in, Ely can still strut (“Glare of Glory”, “Garden of Manhattan”). But the underlying note of his work, from The Flatlanders on down, is one of calm, almost cosmic reassurance, a kind of Zen Texas folk song that conjures vast space and geologic time, whether it’s the accordion-led waltz of “You Can Rely on Me” or “A Man and His Dog”, in which a homeless man casts a skeptical eye on a world that won’t slow down.