Kids in the streets

"Album number seven looks like a turning point for Justin Townes Earle: it's his first not to be recorded in Nashville (he decamped to Nebraska with producer Mike Mogis) and his first since settling down and getting married. Tellingly, there's a quiet contentment replacing the bleakness that marked 2014/15's companion Single Mothers/Absent Fathers sets. Never one to be constrained by the straitjacket of country orthodoxy, Earle infuses his songs with elements of classic soul (Champagne Corolla) and jazz (the delightfully breezy What's Goin' Wrong). Best of all, though, is the title track, a moving reflection on the gentrification of the Nashville neighbourhood in which he grew up".

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"Forming a trilogy with 2014's Single Mothers and 2015's Absent Fathers, J.T. Earle's latest teams him with Omaha indie-rock don Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) for his rangiest set yet. "What's She Crying For" is a moaning honky-tonk weeper with pedal steel and roadhouse piano, "What's Goin' Wrong" is clarinet-spiked Texas swing impressionism, "15-25" is vintage New Orleans R&B gumbo in the Professor Longhair spirit, and "Same Old Stagolee" revives American folk music's original gangsta to an unlikely vibraphone melody. Yet it always feels organic, never mannered. See the title track, acoustic guitar slicing through a pedal steel reverb-haze, Earle waxing nostalgic for a childhood in the 1990s with a timelessness that could conjure the 1890s just as well".

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