Steve Earle

Steve Earle has always remained true to his artistic vision of what his music should be, and in keeping with that, Transcendental Blues is a mishmash of musical styles ranging from the hypnotic Eastern-influenced title track to the Celtic romp of "The Galway Girl" to the banjo-plucking bluegrass that shapes "Until the Day I Die." Lord knows what keeps the collection together -- Earle's husky voice can recall the flat drawl of Bob Dylan or the lilting twang of his Texas folk roots or, at times, the blue-collar straightforwardness of Springsteen -- but it's a highly-charged ramshackle that delights from start to finish.

Steve Earle is all over the map on his new album, and not just Tennessee or even the South.
Transcendental Blues is an intermittently twangy, often trippy and, yes, generally
transcendent outing. The perspicacious Earle references Indian music on the title track, a
droning, modal blues for the ages, and assays a Celtic-bluegrass hybrid on "The Galway
Girl," cementing a kind of stylistic mother-and-child reunion that sounds both nat... More >

If "transcendence is about being still long enough to know when it's time to move on," as he says, he should quit scratching himself ("Over Yonder [Jonathan's Song]," "I Can Wait").