Rodney Crowell

The Outsider (Sugar Hill/DMZ/Columbia)

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives

Souls' Chapel (Superlatone/Universal South)

Middle age is when mortality, once a fuzzy, far-off blur, comes cruelly into focus, when it begins to dawn on you that there are fewer days ahead of than behind you. It's the moment when you realize, as Bob Dylan, then 56, said, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

Middle age is also a time when many performers begin to seem like uninspired versions of their former selves, attempting to construct an image of perpetual youth, Botox-ing up and insisting the years aren't really passing. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you're as canny and talented as Rodney Crowell, 55, and Marty Stuart, 46, the middle years can be the occasion to marshal real-world wisdom and musical experience into stunning artistry.

Blessed with a built-in audience that has followed each from a hit-making youth into alt-country godfather maturity, neither man bothers to court country radio programmers anymore. Each had his last Top 10 hit way back in 1992, each spent a few years correcting course in the late 1990s, and each has refocused with singular resolve in the new millennium. (Each, by the way, also is a former son-in-law of Johnny Cash.) More importantly, each is making music that argues for middle age not as the end of youth but as the beginning of wisdom, a time when smart, realistic people can finally start making sense of themselves and the world.

Not without a few aches and pains, mind you. "I've got 10 good years left in my legs," Crowell observes dryly atop a Chuck Berry groove and chiming guitars in "Say You Love Me," the opening cut on his new album, The Outsider. Luckily, as he points out seconds later, "The first thing to go is not your mind."

Crowell's 2001 album The Houston Kid took stock by casting an eye back to his childhood in Texas, while 2003's Fate's Right Hand was a pragmatic assessment of his present condition. On The Outsider, Crowell turns his attention to the world beyond his skin. Together, the albums form a loose triptych that looks backward, then inward, then outward. If Fate's Right Hand found Crowell spotting the looming shadow of mortality, The Outsider jumps with impatience at the knowledge that the shadow is growing longer every second. Throughout the album, Crowell opts for direct, declamatory communication rather than elaborate metaphor. It's the language of someone who doesn't have time for you to ponder his message. He wants you to get it the first time.

"Don't Get Me Started," for instance, quickly gives you a character—guy in a bar—then runs down a litany of the horrors that Crowell sees everywhere in the age of Bush: "We ran into trouble scamming for oil, the whole Middle East is coming to a boil." In "The Obscenity Prayer (Give It to Me)," Crowell slams right-wing hypocrisy with zero subtlety but perfect clarity. The sentiment of the mostly spoken "Ignorance Is the Enemy" doesn't go much further than its title, but a piece of inspired guest casting—Emmylou Harris on the first verse, John Prine on the second—and some sumptuous harmonies make it moving nonetheless.

In its final stretch, The Outsider scales down its viewpoint from the global and social to the personal and emotional. "Beautiful Despair" takes a cold-eyed look at knowing one's limitations. "Beautiful despair is hearing Dylan when you're drunk at 3 a.m.," Crowell sings, "Knowing that the chances are, no matter what, you'll never write like him." Even for one of America's best songwriters, there's always a faster gun in town.

A few songs later, Crowell tackles Dylan's "Shelter From the Storm," The Outsider's only cover. It's a better song than any of the originals here, not least because it teems with the kind of imagery Crowell eschews these days (on this album, at least; "Making Memories of Us," the Crowell-written valentine that Keith Urban recently placed atop the country chart, drips with poetry). But Crowell's arrangement steals the show—he boldly tweaks his hero's lyrics to turn the song into a duet between the bedraggled protagonist and his female savior, voiced by Harris. Crowell may know his limitations, but he also knows how to get around them; he can't beat Dylan, but he can turn Dylan's song to his own uses.

The Outsider ends with "We Can't Turn Back," which finds Crowell—lacking answers to the worries he enumerates on the album—looking heavenward in resignation. "Pray for peace until you're hoarse, and maybe fear will run its course," he figures. "May God forgive us our insanity, and we'll keep pressing on."

The notion of spirituality as the only true refuge—and deliverance—from an overwhelming world is explored at much greater length on Stuart's first gospel album, Souls' Chapel. Maybe it's an easy answer to midlife crisis—if there's an afterworld, that means the days remaining aren't so few after all—but Stuart makes the particulars of religion seem irrelevant. It's not about the dogma, it's about the love.

Like his previous album, 2003's Country Music (credited, like this one, to Stuart and his ace backing band, the Fabulous Superlatives), it's a seemingly effortless old-school gem. But Souls' Chapel is from a different old school and has a different aim—Country Music took you back home, but Souls' Chapel wants to take you higher.

Stuart has found a singularly seductive way to do that, by basing his version of gospel music in the electrified Mississippi testifying of the Staple Singers. It's one influence Stuart hasn't always worn on his sleeve, but one that he does enough justice here to last a lifetime.

Stuart the producer knows just how little watering these songs need to bloom, setting warm, full-bodied harmonies in a web of spidery electric guitar, nudged along by a spare, restrained rhythm section and a few drops of B-3 organ. Surprisingly, Superlatives drummer Harry Stinson and bass player Brian Glenn give up their rhythm duties (to Chad Cromwell and Glenn Worf, respectively) to concentrate solely on harmonies here. It's a gamble that works, showcasing a natural, easy vocal blend honed at leisure on the bus and backstage.

The album is a blend of Staples numbers, traditional and classic gospel and Stuart originals, and he has chosen (and composed) them with such care that it's often difficult to know which is which. It's easy to imagine Stuart's "It's Time to Go Home" or the tour-de-force "The Gospel Story of Noah's Ark" rocking the pews a century ago. Souls' Chapel winds up with a pair of locomotive Staples songs: Steve Cropper and William Bell's "Slow Train" and Pops Staples' "Move Along Train." By the time Mavis Staples herself comes swooping in on the latter, the devil doesn't stand a chance. You may not be converted, but you'll remember that—even in these days of Christian-right rule that divides to conquer—there still is a welcoming power in the good word.

As a coda, Stuart appends his instrumental title cut. It's a moment of calm reflection that seems to suggest we should savor our time on earth, while making it as heavenly as possible—and that, even if it's getting there, it's not dark yet.