He's still countrypolitan at the core but more than that, with production help by Tucson-based Calexico and guests like Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams and Sam Beam. The pensive (but aren't they all?) lead track, "El Camino," sets a Jonesy jazz lounge tone then adds spice with mariachi horns.
When opening himself like a "Flower" to love, Lee's warm, testifying nature splits the difference between Al Green and James Taylor. And his been-through-the-wringer "Behind Me Now" shuffles nicely like a passage "Into the Mystic."
SPEAKING OF WHOM . . . Beam is sure to stir a hornet's nest of buzz with his eccentric latest as Iron and Wine, "Kiss Each Other Clean" (Warner Bros, A-). The hard-words-a-fallin' bookends "Walking far From Home" and "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough for Me" are open-and-shut-case killers.
And throughout, his playful, low-fi pinging of bleeps and blonks - some electronic, others acoustic - add magical yin/yang contrast to the foreboding imagery in "Me and Lazarus," the Afrobeat "Monkeys Uptown" and waltz-timed "Rabbit Will Run."
EVA CONSTRUCTION: If this year's "American Idol" crop wants a fast lesson in the art of making a song (subtly) your own, they ought to listen to "Simply Eva" (Blix Street, B+) from Eva Cassidy. You know, the Washington, D.C.-spawned balladeer who became an international sensation years after her death from melanoma (at age 33 in 1996), when first the BBC embraced her seemingly prescient, ultra-vulnerable renditions of tunes like "Over the Rainbow" and "Who Knows Where the Time Goes."
Today's collection gathers stripped-down (just voice and guitar) versions of fan faves that feel both intimate and finished, tugging anew at the heart strings.
