It seems like a couple of lifetimes ago that Steve Earle appeared destined to become the Bruce Springsteen of country music. Introducing himself with 1986's Guitar Town, Earle arrived on a wave of "new traditionalism" that extended from the terse conservatism of Randy Travis to the hillbilly flash of Dwight Yoakam. While others in the class of '86 found popular acceptance more quickly, Earle showed the most potential. His Southern populism and unbridled rebelliousness offered a bridge between the hard twang of rural country music and the harder dynamics of rock, reinforcing the strengths of both camps rather than settling for a dilution more typical of the Eagles.
down the same road with 1987's
Exit 0, an album almost as strong as
Guitar Town, Earle took a metallic detour. Both
Copperhead Road (1988) and
The Hard Way (1991) buried some inspired material beneath too many guitars, undermining the country side of his music. As Earle began to attain greater notoriety for his drug use, divorces and tattoos than for his music, his oncepromising career looked more like a highway wreck and was viewed with apprehension by those who slowed down to gape at the carnage. It was said that Earle couldn't even get arrested in Nashville – until he hit bottom after a 1994 crack bust.
I Feel Alright sounds like the album Earle should have made after Exit 0, although its songs are fired by his struggles in the years since. As innocuous as the title sounds, Earle makes it seem more like a threat, a dare directed at those who "would live through me/Lock me up and throw away the key/Or just find a place to hide away/Hope that I'll just go away." He follows with a defiant "huh!" as if the tail-between-his-legs contrition that his detractors might have expected is about as likely as a dog learning to play guitar.
Though last year's acoustic Train a Comin' was widely (and, at the time, rightly) hailed as a renewal for Earle, the harder-edged conviction of I Feel Alright makes its predecessor feel like the musical equivalent of a halfway house. On Train a Comin', Earle recast himself in the tradition of Texas troubadours, paying proper respect to his elders (Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt in particular) while acknowledging his excesses in such songs as "Goodbye" and "Angel Is the Devil."
With I Feel Alright, Earle has returned full force with an electric vengeance. While such songs as "Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You" and "Hard-Core Troubadour," with its playful quote from Springsteen's "Rosalita," sound like they could have been highlights from the best of Earle's early albums, there was nothing in his past work to predict the Beatlesque buoyancy and yearning harmonies of "More Than I Can Do," the bare-bones bluesiness of "CCKMP" ("Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain") and "South Nashville Blues," or the string-laden, gospel-tinged heartbreak of "Valenti
