Hayes Carll – KMAG YOYO (and other American stories) – (Lost Highway)

After being teased by a taste of Hayes Carll singing “Take Me Away” in the recent movie Country Strong, fans can rejoice in a new, full-length, recording from one of the best musicians to come out of the Texas Gulf Coast.

Carll extends a worthy Texas tradition: the weathered, hard-drinking, weary but clear-eyed troubadour with, as one of his earlier songs put it, a “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart.” He sings in a wheezy country twang, and his lyrics suggest the bar stool wit of an engaging loser. His songs can be Kristofferson-like hymns or upbeat honky-tonk, rattling off lyrics at the speed of Mr. Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” while his voice has a distant relationship to the standard musical scale.

As is usually the case with any Hayes Carll release, the songs are stellar stand-outs. The title track of the record (which is an acronym used fairly often in the military) is sung in the voice of a contemporary teenage G.I. trying to make his way through the Afghanistan morass any way he can; “Another Like You,” a duet with Cary Ann Hearst, finds clever ways to set up an opposites-attract one-night stand; “Bottle in My Hand” hauls in a couple of Carll’s peers in Corb Lund and Todd Snider to further investigate honky tonk issues.

This release continue the find work of Hayes Carll and others of his ilk (like Ryan Bingham, Guy Clark, & various shades of Willie Nelson). If you’ve gotta be “on your own”, this is a great record to take along for the ride – There’s not a bad tune in the bunch!