There’s an adventuresome spirit coursing through Michelle Branch’s Everything Comes and Goes, her first solo project since 2003’s Hotel Paper. This engaging EP is both an extension of her country-slanted work as one half of the Wreckers and a return to the self-revelatory focus of her early albums. Branch’s parenting experiences and career upheavals over the past few years are reflected in the hard-won wisdom heard in these tunes. Producers John Leventhal and John Shanks surround her with spacious, acoustic-oriented tracks, highlighted by keening pedal-steel guitars and rippling banjos. The bittersweet reverie “Summertime” and the thoughtful lullaby “Crazy Ride” are sparkling country-pop numbers. Branch flashes a tougher attitude on the biting “Ready to Let You Go” and the empowering “Sooner or Later,” reclaiming some of the alt-rock energy found in her pre-Nashville days. Her deepening strengths as a singer are captured in “I Want Tears” and the title tune, a pair of emotionally resonant ballads.