Rodney Crowell, Tarpaper Sky (out April 15 via New West Records)
There isn't just one Rodney Crowell, you know. The preternaturally gifted and studious songwriter and sideman of the '70s had, by the end of the '80s, given way to the smart and stylish progressive country star, who consciously reinvented himself — to ecstatic reviews — as the eagled-eyed story-crafting sage early in the Aughts. Last year's Old Yellow Moon, a duo set with Emmylou Harris, brought yet another Crowell into focus: one with the breezy magnetism of an artist strolling the summit of esteem. That same Crowell shows up again on Tarpaper Sky. His choice of band — Michael Rhodes, Eddie Bayers and Steuart Smith, the same crack players who lent swagger to his 1988 blockbuster Diamonds & Dirt — is a sign that Crowell has come to embrace his earlier incarnations. Not that self-integration is the concept behind this latest album. There is no concept, really, but a line from the chorus of album opener "The Long Journey Home" captures the spirit of the thing: "The simple life tastes sweeter." Swing and sentimentality come easier than ever to Crowell during "Fever on the Bayou," "Grandma Loved That Old Man," "Jesus Talk to Mama" and "I Wouldn't Be Me Without You." —JEWLY HIGHT
Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminals' Starvation League, Undefeated (out April 15 via Bloodshot Records)
Next month, director William Miller will unveil Don't Follow Me (I'm Lost), a documentary that promises an intimate look into the life of second-generation Nashville songster and road dog Bobby Bare Jr. In the meantime we have Undefeated, the brand-new long-player from Bare and his Young Criminals' Starvation League. Here, as per usual, Bare utilizes a cast of ringers to construct a lush, diverse record that's just a touch too all-over-the-map to reduce to the typical brands of "Americana" or "alt-country" or "roots." The banjo and barroom piano of "My Baby Took My Baby Away" and the steel guitar of "Undefeated" don't come off as perfunctory nods to Bare's Music City roots so much as old drinking buddies Bare employs to help tell his often surprisingly fragile tales. The record isn't without its manic moments — Bare is at times brash and confident, at times diffident or even apologetic. He howls a red-lining howl over the thumping cacophony of "North of Alabama by Mornin'," but croons a wounded justification for his infidelity in "If She Cared." I imagine this is the same Bare we'll see in Don't Follow Me: surrounded by a talented supporting cast, fundamentally flawed in that way we humans are, mostly prepared to own up to his shortcomings, and innately likable. —D. PATRICK RODGERS
Ray Price, Beauty Is ... (out April 15 via AmeriMonte Records)
On his final record, Ray Price deftly negotiates the strings and background vocals producer Fred Foster has added to a set of songs about how there are no more songs to sing. Finished a few months before Price died in December, Beauty Is ... is prime countrypolitan — what in other hands would be merely schlock registers here as super-schlock that may give pause to anyone who thinks Scott Walker's experimental efforts are the last word in how aging singers face the dying of the light. A pioneer of Nashville pop-country crossover whose vocal chops make his '60s hits listenable to this day, Price was also a bandleader whose music often swang like jazz. You'll hear only a hint of Price's famed shuffle rhythms on Beauty Is ..., but he eases his way into such material as "It Always Will Be" with conversational aplomb, and the strings add texture to a confessional record at least as interesting as Walker's Bish Bosch, if not Scott 3. Sly to the end, Price essays Sonny Throckmorton's "I Wish I Was 18 Again," and slips into the jazzy changes of "Among My Souvenirs" like the savvy pop singer he was. —EDD HURT
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