Los Angeles' Eleni Mandell has always been a fine songwriter, mixing wry personal notes with lush tunes that draw on on wistful doo-wop, sunny country and mid-century pop. Her newest and eighth album I Can See the Future was recorded while she was pregnant with twins, after deciding to go it alone due to the dissolution of several relationships, both personal and professional.

That makes these songs Mandell's most overtly personal but no less relatable. Hopeful but realistic, Mandell's lyrics deal directly with single motherhood without abandoning single womanhood. She sings, “Who’s gonna kiss my lipstick lips, who’s gonna hold me tight / I got a bun in the oven, but I still need lovin’ / Will you be my man tonight?”

Mandell's noir-tinged edges may have softened a bit—the tune "Crooked Man" doesn't sound so much like an accusation as it does a story of a past experience, where the facts linger, though the heightened emotions don't. And Mandell can pick a team—she recruited the terrific pedal steel player Greg Leisz and saxophonist Steve Berlin (The Blasters, Los Lobos) for a handful of songs, while North Carolina singer-songwriter Benji Hughes plays Lee Hazelwood to her Nancy Sinatra on "Never Have to Fall in Love Again." It's another solid album from a songwriter confident in her talent, if not the path of her own personal life. And in this case, seeing the future doesn't mean turning away from it.

Eleni Mandell is playing the EARL in Atlanta on Thursday, July 27.