Steve Earle & The Dukes
Album: Terraplane
Label: New West
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.steveearle.com

This is the ostensible followup to 2013's Earle opus The Low Highway, and is in essence a straightout blues album. Much of it was written while Steve toured Europe alone for five weeks with just a guitar, a mandolin and a backpack, and its title comes from Robert Johnson's Terraplane Blues - itself inspired by the 1930s car of that name. Here, Steve's legendary storytelling talents are placed directly at the service of the blues, and the musical settings betray the influences of such blues giants as Freddie King, Lightnin' Hopkins, Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Billy Gibbons. Grungy, grinding, heavy-duty electric-guitar-dominated backdrops from his band The Dukes here update Steve's experiences of growing up with the Texas blues of the 60s and 70s; his guitarist Chris Masterson was raised on that musical diet himself, and it shows. But there's much more to this record:

Chicago and Detroit get a look-in too. The eleven new songs on this record are shot through with the gritty optimism that characterises all of Steve's work, but here the tone shifts from the mournful brooding of Better Off Alone (a disc highlight) to the almost elegiac mood of You're The Best Lover I Ever Had, from the Guthrie-esque acoustic stomp of Gamblin' Blues and the rueful yet sassy country-swing-style duet with Eleanor Whitmore on Baby's Just As Mean As Me, from the purposeful strut of The Usual Time to the more sardonic Jumpin' Jack Flash kissoff of Go Go Boots Are Back and the mean'n'dirty King Of The Blues with its shades of Muddy Waters. And then there's the powerful spoken-blues monologue of The Tennessee Kid that takes the Robert Johnson story by the throat.

Without making too much of Steve's personal circumstances (the most recent divorce, from Allison Moorer, after an eight-year marriage), this is quite a painful set of songs to feel entirely comfortable with, however musically convincing a tour of his personal blues it ends up.

David Kidman