Transcendental Blues

"Acoustic guitar/If you think I play hard/Well, you could have been owned by Steve Earle." - The Magnetic Fields, 'Acoustic Guitar'

The Magnetic Fields' Stephin (sic) Merritt was of course simply havin' a larf when he wrote those lines but he put his finger on something here all the same. Not for nothing has Earle earned a reputation as one of the most visceral and edgy musicians ever to take up an acoustic instrument.

Transcendental Blues mostly features the full-on electric Steve Earle laying down some fuzzed-up, dirty rock'n'roll hooks but there are moments when he lays aside the Gibson Les Paul for the wooden six-string and all hell still breaks loose - as on the good-time hooleys of 'Steve's Last Ramble' and 'The Galway Girl', both recorded with Sharon Shannon and a posse of other Irish players in Dublin.

The album starts with the tremendous title track: a pithy examination of those everyday existential crises that slip into our consciousness when we're least expecting them to, all underscored by an udder-plucking grunge riff.

'Another Town', 'Steve's Last Ramble' and 'When I Fall' are all classic American road songs that fit neatly into a tradition delineated by Earle's heroes - from Hank to Townes and even stopping off chez Springsteen. The latter is a duet featuring Earle's sister, Stacey, whose squeaky tones offer a quaint contrast to the bruv's gruff Texan twang.

'Everyone's In Love With You', on the other hand, is Earle's homage to The Beatles' Revolver; all swirling psychedelic guitars and backward loops, with a lyric that's simply devastating.

But 'The Boy Who Never Cried' could be a career-high in terms of Earle's story-telling nous. In a few verses, he manages to construct a fable worthy of Hans Christian Andersen, with a pay-off at the end that is masterful in its terse understatement.

So another smashing Steve Earle album, then, which in its many stylistic guises, manages to give a very good overview of what Earle's about.

If it all sounds a little uneven, don't worry: much of what's on offer here really is transcendent.