I listened to Alone in the Universe a couple days ago and noticed a couple things.
In the lines "It takes a lot of rain / To make a flower grow" in "Love and Rain," "grow" is sung with a melisma (C Bb G), musically giving something of a sense of its meaning.
In the chorus, there's an echo applied to "again" in the line "Keep comin' back again," and that repetition also gives an impression of the meaning.
