The Mountain

If this is what a couple of years in the slammer does for you, I'd go behind bars myself. The Mountain makes it three in a row for Steve Earle. After the glories of El Corazon and I Feel Alright, he'd be forgiven for hitting cruise control for a while, but Stevie's no slouch when it comes to the recording studio, and The Mountain has got the requisite number of sublime moments to warrant a place at this table he's made all by himself.

Genre-bending is what Steve Earle does best. Remember 'My Old Friend The Blues', with its country blues; 'Copperhead Road' with its trash metal rock 'n' country? And 'Valentine's Day' in all its maudlin glory? Well, this time round he's squaring the circle for real. And that means getting inside the skin of bluegrass, and in the company of some of the finest purveyors of Bill Monroe's music, The Del McCoury Band.

Some say that bluegrass came out of a hankering to respectabilise hillbilly and old time music. Earle doesn't march to the beat of that particular drum, but listening to him cradled in the arms of the title track, one suspects he's given to more than the odd bout of worship at the Monroe shrine.

His recent sojourn in Galway is in fleeting evidence on the two instrumental tracks, 'Connemara Breakdown' and 'Paddy On The Beat', with nothing more than mandolin, bazouki and fiddle tiptoeing around loping melodies that never pretend to be anything more than what they are: good tunes.

'Outlaw's Honeymoon' shines afresh on its second outing, having first seen the light of day on El Corazon. Fleshed out by the entire McCoury ensemble, it's reminiscent of the rawest of Monroe's bluegrass tunes, with mandolin and fiddle calling all the shots.

'Leroy's Dustbowl Blues' breaks one of the primary rules of bluegrass by having a dobro whinny and howl all over the place. A model of decorous ensemble playing, it's a set piece that shows bluegrass off to its very best advantage, and should nearly be enough to convince the sceptics that there's more to the music of the south than the theme tune from The Beverly Hillbillies.

Earle's voice is ever-changing, dictated in no small part by the songs themselves. At times he sounds like his nasal passages are trying to usurp his vocal cords, but these aberrations are amply compensated for by a rapid recovery back to that fine twangy Earle voice that comes straight out of Texas, via a larynx that's cradle and hack saw at one and the same time.

'Pilgrim' is probably the track that will garner the most airplay. A tribute to the late Roy Huskey Junior, it's a choral masterpiece of understatement with everyone from Emmylou Harris to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings paying their respects to the 'best doghouse bass player that ever lived'.

Steve Earle's always been capable of plumbing emotional depths that other so called 'country' musicians can only dream of, but on The Mountain he's pushing his dexterity to the limits, and oh, how it revels in the challenge. Grab a pew and listen for yourself.