Spinning Around The Sun

JIMMY DALE GILMORE: "Spinning Around The Sun" (Elektra)

WEST TEXAN Jimmy Dale Gilmore could have you believe there really is a kinder, gentler America. Joe Ely and Butch Hancock's colleague in The Flatlanders, Gilmore's gift is his ability to refine a special serenity out of the ache of Hank Williams' high and lonesome wail.

Until now, his career has been clouded and marginal. Not only has his style been too traditional, Gilmore has also been a Country'n'Eastern philosopher, a man whose own songs exist at a tangent from Nashville and its preference for soap-opera lyrics.

But Spinning Around The Sun sets him in the best company. With Emory Gordy Jnr. producing and playing and such as James Burton and Glen D. Hardin also assisting, Gilmore just doesn't have the benefit of both Elvis' bands, he also has the cream of Gram Parsons' team.

But this angel is less grievous. Pain may be acknowledged and sung through but there's also a dignified hope, as modest as it is enduring. Take his version of Hancock's 'Just A Wave'. It may document a failed affair that meant far more to the man than the woman but Gilmore never congeals into broody self-pity since it's palpable that he accepts both the woman's autonomy and the lessons of the experience.

Similarly his version of 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry' is no maudlin moan. Instead he rescues Hank Williams as a folk-poet. When he asks "Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves begin to die," you do literally see it while meantime his guitarist - surely, James Burton? - is conducting his own sympathetic symphony of classic country-blues licks.

Next up, 'Mobile Line (France Blues)' is an old-timey trip down the whistle-stop tracks while the album has already stated its commitment to excellence with the sinuous guitar intro to its opening track, 'Where You Going'. And if once or twice Spinning Around The Sun might dip too far into the mainstream for those who prefer more crunch in their country-rock, that's an acceptable trait in an album that so consolingly unites its twin themes of survival and serenity.

But then what distinguishes Jimmy Dale Gilmore is the fact that he's one of the very few country artists prepared to take the spirit of the old rugged cross and venture off into the mystic. Spinning Round The Sun is both ancient and modern exactly because Gilmore's unique sensibility is open to both Native and East Indian ideals, countrypolitan in a truer, deeper way than Nashville has yet understood.

• Bill Graham