The first of many girls who whirl through Carll’s third album likes him to watch her naked. That makes her a drunken poet’s dream, to his mind, and this Texas troubadour’s happy to play that dreamer. Carll’s characters have problems with commitment, booze and religion, and the Tom Waits cover gets to the album’s essence faster than any of his own songs, but his best rakish ramblings put him on a par with such collaborators as Darrell Scott and Ray Wylie Hubbard. That’s a place any drunken poet worth the price of his guitar would dream about. — Mansfield
Download: Faulkner Street, Willing to Love Again, the cover of Waits’ I Don’t Want to Grow Up Skip: She Left Me for Jesus
4/29/2008