• "A LARUM IS, WELL, IT'S MIDDLE ENGLISH FOR 'ALARM,' ...I CHOSE THE TITLE FOR A COUPLE OF REASONS. IN SHAKESPEARE, YOU OFTEN SEE 'A LARUM' TO INDICATE SOME SORT OF RUCKUS GOING ON OFFSTAGE -- AND OFFSTAGE WAS WHERE REAL LIFE WAS TAKING PLACE.  ALSO, THE LARUM WOULD BE THE WARNING BELL IN EVERY TOWN, AND THEY'D RING IT IN TIMES OF SIEGE AND DISEASE, WHICH I THINK IS APPROPRIATE FOR WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW." -- JOHNNY FLYNN

To preview tracks from A Larum, please check HERE.

» www.pitchforkmedia.com

Elvis Costello is as unpredictable as life is, and he likes it that way.

"I never plan a next move," says Costello on Tuesday a few hours before going on stage at the Tennessee Theatre. "I don't have that ambition to say 'I have to do this that way this time.' You'll be disappointed. I just find myself doing things. You just follow it through the best way you can and get the most out of it and have the most fun you can have doing it."

That goes for this day, as well. Costello hasn't done any previous interviews for his current tour. His new album, "Momofuku," named for the creator of Ramen Noodles because the album came together almost instantly, was released on vinyl and digital-download only in April and on CD last week. He hadn't wanted to release it on CD, feeling CDs are a dying media form and vinyl is the way "nature intended" recorded music to be delivered.

Over a two-hour lunch at Sullivan's Saloon, Costello was a far cry from the angry young man he was once reported to be.

He jokes easily: "I have the blood pressure of an 18-year-old. Unfortunately it's an 18-year-old Labrador," he says just before ordering a salad and a baked potato.

Costello is gracious with fans wanting autographs and photos with him, seems optimistic about the future of music, talks of being happily married (to singer/pianist Diana Krall) and the father of year-old twin sons (and an adult son from a previous marriage) and how much fun he has working on a new TV show for the Sundance Channel. He also says that before recording "Momofuku," he really didn't have plans to ever record again.

"I sort of got myself in the frame of mind that it wasn't any fun anymore because the business was so screwed up that it sucked out all the things I liked about it," says Costello. "That ended the minute you handed the record in. But I really like playing so I thought, 'Let's just do that.' Then I thought, 'No, that's crazy. Change the business if you don't like the way it is. Don't give up on it now.' "

The world became aware of Elvis Costello in 1977 when his album "My Aim Is True" marked the arrival of a literate and edgy new British singer-songwriter. He was lumped with the punk movement and later new wave, but Costello continually confounded expectations. He recorded an R&B album, a country disc, collaborated with pop master Burt Bacharach and later released music in the jazz and classical categories. Revered as one of music's greats, he has also been criticized for his eclecticism.

"People just get way too serious about everything," says Costello. "They overanalyze it and try to solve this big jigsaw puzzle and get all indignant in some of the write-ups: 'Only do what I want and everything will be allright.' Well, obviously, I'm not going to do that! I'm doing this over here and it may not be to your taste and you may not like it, but I'm doing it so I can find out about it and have those experiences. I don't want to get down to the end of my life and say 'Well, I kind of had the chance to sing with an orchestra or to play with some different musicians and do some types of things, but I was too timid to do it.'

"This juvenile idea of 'our music and their music' is ludicrous. There is no 'our music and their music.' There's just 'music.' If you don't understand it, at least have the honesty to admit you just don't or that it just isn't for you. … The biggest misconception is that you're doing it to look clever. … It isn't exactly difficult to be the cleverest person in the room in show business! I don't think I'm anywhere near the cleverest person around, but it's so overestimated. The last thing I would do is to make myself look smarter than the next person. I'm just not interested in being smart. I'm interested in feeling things."

It was the feeling that inspired Costello to record "Momofuku." Costello was doing a guest spot on a new album by Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis and he enjoyed the experience so much that he decided to unite the crew from Lewis' disc with his own band, plus some friends, and record his own disc.

Costello had a song he'd written with Rosanne Cash in hand as well as a couple of tunes written with Loretta Lynn. However, the bulk of what would become "Momofuku" was written in the two weeks that Costello was waiting for the other musicians' schedules to allow them to record.

While Costello says he didn't intend to write confessional songs, a few of the tracks are among the most personal of his career.

"I just wrote what I was thinking about at that moment," says Costello. "Sometimes you play them and you don't have time to think about them. They're just exactly whatever you were thinking."

That includes the song "My Three Sons."

"Some people are going to be a little bit discomforted about it and think it's too sentimental," says Costello. "But they're not me. They have the idea that I have to be angry all the time or I don't perform to their idea of who I should be. But I am who I am now. It doesn't weaken you to love someone. It strengthens you. All people."

He says the song also contains some regret and fear.

"Obviously when you're older and you're a father you have to think about how long you'll be on this Earth. Those things temper the joy. It's not a universal experience, so I don't expect everybody to understand it. But for what it's worth, that's what the song is about."

Costello recently filmed four episodes of a new talk/music show, "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With …" which will premiere on the Sundance Channel in November. The first guests are Tony Bennett, Lou Reed, Elton John (also the show's co-producer) and President Bill Clinton.

"I'm trying to get the most busy people in the world," says Costello, smiling.

The show has been filled with surprises. Clinton talked about how much music influenced him while he was growing up in Arkansas. Reed, a notoriously difficult interview, was engaging and discussed his love of R&B. John talked about obscure songwriters he loved and Bennett, unexpectedly, invited Krall, who was in the audience, on camera to perform with him on "I've Got the World On a String."

Costello says he has no idea what the future will hold, but he isn't worried.

"The last couple of years have been amazing. Considering becoming a father again and setting up a new home in another country (he generally lives in Krall's native Canada), I've done an amazing amount of work. We've been fortunate that our boys have been healthy and have traveled with us. The rest of the time I've had to travel and be away for short periods of time. But I got to go to Merlefest last year. I got to play a group of dates with an orchestra, and a summer tour of Europe with Allen Toussaint and Steve Nieve.

"I think the record business has gotten a bit overheated in the past few years. It started to resemble the blockbuster movie business - how many it's sold in the past week. Tell me how many it's sold five years from now and tell me how smart you were. Most of the people making the judgements about what to do and the way things are in the business are people who have been there five minutes and won't be there in five minutes. I've always taken this as a vocation and taken the position that I'm going to be here a long time."

» www.knoxnews.com

If we are to believe the very prolific words that Elvis Costello has posted on his Web site, Momofuku takes its name from Momofuku Ando, the inventor of the cup noodle.

OK. Why?

”Like so many things in this world of wonders, all we had to do to make this record was add water,“ he writes.

Well, in truth, Costello simply added some musical acquaintances new (Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis) and longstanding (Los Lobos' David Hidalgo) as well as the support of his band, the Imposters, which is really his career-defining band, the Attractions, with flexible bassist-vocalist Davey Faragher as the only modification. Costello recorded and mixed the album in a week, then made it initially available, in this download age, only as a vinyl album. The CD version of Momofuku hits stores Tuesday.

The recording process aside,Momofuku is no retrofest. Admittedly, hearing Steve Nieve's cheesy organ runs whip around the album's opening tunes like a Jack Russell terrier conjures thoughts of the wondrously obstinate music that the Attractions cut, amazingly, three decades ago. But Momofuku is as instinctual as any record Costello has made. It boasts a mix of pop smarts and coarse rock 'n' roll cunning that brings to mind such great upstart Costello albums as Mighty Like a Rose and Blood and Chocolate. But even those comparisons trivialize the sparks that fly off these tunes.

As usual, Costello is a sucker for stories of dark melody and even darker wit, as in the way the Dickensian badlands of Harry Worth — where ”streets are paved with heaven's penance, gutters are full of suicide“ — are given mighty shoves from Nieve's piano-pounding jabs and loads of jagged, fuzzy guitar.

”I rather go blind for speaking my mind,“ Costello sings earlier in American Gangster Time, a tune whose vintage Attractions attack, along with Lewis' vocal support, creates a sense of pop urgency that is familiar yet vitally new.

And then there are instances when Costello blithely takes on the essentials of the human condition.

On Drum and Bone, he sings unapologetically over a spry acoustic shuffle from the standpoint of ”a limited, primitive kind of man.“ But on Pardon Me, Madam, My Name Is Eve, the unrest goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There, jealousy and hypocrisy are no match for the burdens of the waiting world (”there's always someone on the outside doing all the suffering“).

A lighter turn is taken on My Three Sons, a tune that is tender in tone and autobiographical in subject matter. It's not exactly an ode to the generations-old Fred MacMurray TV show of the same name. But it's equally wholesome.

The journey concludes with Go Away, a subtle little rave-up/kiss-off rocker built around a deliriously static drum and organ roll that recalls the 1960s single 96 Tears. It's the kind of melody that will stick in your brain for days.

In the end, Momofuku comes off like a movie set on fast-forward that manages to make perfect sense. There's color, noise, passion, regret, humor, joy, melody and an incredible sense of motion. Just don't forget to add water.

Note: Elvis Costello and the Imposters perform at 8 p.m. May 7 at Louisville Palace. Tickets are $44.50 through TicketMaster, (859) 281-6644 or www.ticketmaster.com

» www.kentucky.com

Johnny Flynn, dressed in a crumpled plaid shirt, jeans and well-worn tweed jacket, has the air of a young, sensitive academic rather than a pop singer. When we meet he's even clutching a much-thumbed copy of John Gray's gloomy polemic Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals.

Smiling tentatively, there is, however, nothing he can do about the fact that he is drop-dead gorgeous. Lantern-jawed, with a mop of blond hair, russet-red cheeks and blue eyes, no matter how hard he might try to downplay them, you can't scruff up looks like that. The 24-year-old Brit has what one would call movie-star good looks; no surprise then that he is, in fact, also a successful stage actor and movie star.

Flynn spent last year travelling the world with Propeller, a much-lauded all-male Shakespeare company. And the movie star bit? “Well, only in Holland,” he laughs, embarassed. In 2006 Flynn was the lead in Crusader in Jeans. “It sounds as though it must be a gay Eighties porn flick. In fact it was a cross between Back to the Future and The Last Temptation of Christ. It was very weird.” It was the highest-grossing children's film yet in Holland and Flynn's face glows beetroot when chatting about young female fans. “It is difficult, er, not that there are many but, er, it's hard. You don't want to lead anyone on.”

We are here to talk about his debut album, the folky, literate curio that is A Larum. Recorded in a barn outside Seattle with Gossip's producer, Ryan Hadlock, it proposes Flynn as poster boy to Laura Marling's poster girl in what is being described as a nu-folk scene. A rollicking yet bittersweet indie update on traditional sounds, the record showcases Flynn's gift for narrative and his prodigious musicianship. On it he plays guitar, mandolin, violin, organ, accordian and trumpet.

He is not, you see, your usual pop singer-turned-actor or actor-turned-pop singer. His father was the musical theatre actor Eric Flynn. One of his earliest memories is of his father starring opposite Suzi Quatro in Annie Get Your Gun. “They didn't get on at all. He thought she was the petulant rock star and she thought he was this stuffy old luvvie.”

His siblings are all actors and he recalls: “It was really special as a kid to see your dad on stage and then go through the stage door into the dressing room. It was very addictive.”

As a child, Flynn's father was interned by the Japanese during the Second World War. He died of cancer, aged 62, in 2002, and one of the stand-out songs on the album is the funereal yet defiant Hong Kong Cemetery.

Flynn explains: “I was in Hong Kong for the Shakespeare tour and visited my grandfather's grave. I'd never met him. All I had was a faded 20-year-old photo of my own father at the grave.”

Born in South Africa, Flynn moved to live near Winchester aged 3. It was a violin teacher who recommended that he try, aged 8, for a music scholarship to the nearby feeder school for Winchester College.

Flynn's memories of being a “Quirister” are mixed. “In retrospect, I think some of the teachers were quite abusive. We had choir rehearsal for up to three hours a day, plus instrument practice. Our whole lives were lived within the cathedral cloisters. On the other hand, it was very atmospheric. But I was ready to leave.”

Aged 13, Flynn won another music scholarship to Bedales, the boarding school. Currently vying with the non-fee-paying Brit School as the premier hothouse for chart talent, the school's recent alumni include Lily Allen, Luke Pritchard of the Kooks and Patrick Wolf. “It's small but they have a lot of funding and are very supportive. While I was there people set up a film society, ran gigs and founded a weekly newspaper. People come out ready to get on with careers.”

His father fell ill during his gap year and he returned home to Wales to look after him so that his mum could continue to oversee the B&B they ran. “I will never stop missing him but I'm grateful we really got each other in those last few months. We hadn't been getting on but that forced us both to a point of surrender.”

After that he moved to London and threw himself into acting but was all the time recording in his bedroom and putting on nights. After the Propeller tour, he got together a band, which includes his younger sister Lillie, and suddenly landed a record deal. “I wasn't looking for one but it's amazing. I've been able to buy a house with my mum. The B&B is my brother's and he'd had to take it back.”

One should mention that this stepbrother is Jerome Flynn, of Robson and Jerome fame. It's something that is noticeably absent from his press release,

“Is it?” he says flustered, “Well, I'm not consciously keeping it under wraps. We are really close but I'm aware that it can be unhelpful. He's 20 years older, my path musically hasn't really been anything to do with his.”

So, what next? “Music is the most important thing in my life but there is so much I want to do. I want to write, to travel. Just last weekend, on a whim, some friends and I went and climbed up Snowdon. I realise I need more of that in my life. To feel humbled by the world.”

Such distractions might not be music to his record label's ears but you can't help thinking all power to him.

» entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

Hayes Carll is easily misunderstood.

A singer-songwriter with an eye for wry observation and a gift for clever couplets, Carll's new album, "Trouble in Mind," is the first indication The Woodlands-bred songsmith has a knack for keeping people on their toes.

Consider the album's last track: "She Left For Me for Jesus." A satirical slice of gorgeous honky-tonk shuffle worthy of Gruene Hall, Carll's good-natured yarn about a clueless small-towner whose girlfriend has turned a new leaf has been known to rankle a few feathers.

"I've had a few people walk out," Carll said. "But the song is not about me wanting to beat up Jesus, or really anything negative about Jesus at all. It's about an ignorant, intolerant good ol' boy who thinks his girl is fooling around with Jesus. Like Ray Wylie Hubbard says, 'The problem with irony is that not everybody gets it.' "

No stranger to Corpus Christi, Carll returns to the Coastal Bend on Thursday for his first gig at the House of Rock. Edmonton's Corb Lund and The Hurtin' Albertans and local Americana quintet Hobo open.

"I think the first time I played Corpus was for Buccaneer Days in 2002," Carll said. "I remember John Evans, Sisters Morales and Davin James were all there, and we had a hell of an after party out in Port A."

Carll knows a thing or two about parties. The 30-something troubadour's current songbook reads like an index of a Charles Bukowski collection of short stories: "Drunken Poet's Dream," "Knockin' Over Whiskeys" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart."

Carll honed his chops, both musically and lyrically, haunting the beachfront dives of Crystal Beach near Galveston for four years.

"Well, when I moved back to Texas (after attending college in Arkansas), I was broke," he said. "I had the idea that I wanted to be a songwriter but I hadn't really proven it to myself that I could do it yet. So, rather than jump into the thick of it with everyone else, I thought I'd be better off easing my way in. I found a cheap beach to live on, a few bars to sing at, and started figuring out what I could do on my own."

It's all in a day's work for a workaday songwriter.

If you go:
Who: Hayes Carll, Corb Lund and The Hurtin Albertans, and Hobo.
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Where: House of Rock, 511 Starr St.
Cost: $10
Information: 882-7625

» www.caller.com

As with many a liberal arts student, Hendrix College in Conway prepared Hayes Carll for jobs waiting tables at Red Lobster, digging ditches and tending bar. But the graduate with a history degree and a minor in theater also learned how to think for himself, and after giving it some thought, Carll embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter.

Not necessarily a "serious" singer-songwriter, mind you, but Carll is a musician with a sense of humor and the desire to entertain an audience by employing his laconic style, dry wit and drawling voice. A native of the Houston suburbs, Carll is on a path to the big time right now, or at least to the times that have occupied some of his musical idols, such as Ray Wylie Hubbard, Guy Clark, Steve Earle and Bob Dylan.

He’s out on tour promoting his third album, Trouble in Mind, released April 8 by the well-respected label, Lost Highway, home to three more of Carll’s musical favorites - Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett.

"I’m still kinda doing the same thing I’ve always done," Carll says, "but now I have a lot more help.

It’s been good working with them.

They’ve been doing everything I’d hoped for, which is a major part of the reason why I wanted to sign with them."

Carll has just returned from the second annual Stagecoach country music festival in California, where the headliners were The Eagles, George Jones and Dwight Yoakam. His immediate plans are for three weeks of touring Texas, then off to California to tour with The Old 97’s, then on to Europe and Canada for a month in each.

"That’ll take me to October, then I guess I’ll start all over again," he says.

Carll, 32, began his musical climb in deliberate fashion, opting at first to avoid corporate entanglements, instead releasing an independent debut CD (Flowers and Liquor), then self-releasing his second album, Little Rock.

His first album contained 12 songs, 11 of which Carll wrote, along with humorous commentary on each of his songs, as with the final cut, "Barroom Lament," on which he wrote "My first hangout when I moved to Galveston was the Old Quarter Cafe. It’s the best bar ever except that they don’t have liquor, food or customers."

On Carll’s second album, there are 11 songs, seven of which Carll wrote himself, with three of the others co-written with pals, including two of those musical idols, Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard. On the new album, Hubbardand Carll collaborate again, on the album’s first cut, "Drunken Poet’s Dream." There’s also a cover version of "I Don’t Wanna Grow Up," by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, written in 1992.

"I thought that was something I could do, and I put my own spinon it," Carll says.

After several years of life on the Texas Gulf Coast, Carll now lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Jenna (not the one who has President Bush as a father) and their 4-year-old son, Eli.

"We moved there about two years ago," Carll says. "My wife, who’s a Hendrix girl, gota job teaching there, and it’s a great town with a great music scene."

For several years, Carll has averaged about 200 shows a year, but he figures there will be more this year.

"With the new album release, I’ll probably top that. I’ve already done 80 or 90."


Hayes Carll 9 p.m. today, Sticky Fingerz Chicken Shack, 107 Commerce St., Little Rock Opening act: Corb Lund
Tickets: $12
(501) 372-7707

» www2.arkansasonline.com

Hayes Carll pines for lost youth differently than Tom Waits or The Ramones. (“Pine” isn’t really a verb you’d apply to the latter two.) Waits growled through the ramshackle original version of “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” and The Ramones sawed through theirs with caustic guitars and a callow snarl. On Carll’s latest album, Trouble in Mind, he gives the song a moping country treatment that doesn’t sound a bit menacing or ironic—just heartfelt.

“I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” echoes the gap between the album’s wild-eyed nostalgia and where Carll is in life. A few years back, the 32-year-old Texas native did something revolutionary for a hard-living troubadour: He settled down with a wife and a kid. But family life hasn’t yet colored his songwriting.

The 14 tracks on Trouble—his third album and ?rst for Lost Highway—revolve around footloose rambling, drinking and badly mangled love affairs. There’s “Faulkner Street”—a bottleneck-seared romp reminiscing about a youthful lounging-and-partying lifestyle. “I Got a Gig” channels the “homeless Cheers on meth” where Carll first earned a living playing music in the coastal Texas community of Crystal Beach. As he puts it, it’s “a place where a lot of people move to hide out from the law, or ex-wives or the IRS.”

“When I started, I wasn’t listening to [songwriters] to hear them sing about their children or how happy they were,” says Carll. “The guys that I was into, it was about the travel and the broken hearts and the toll that life takes on you. That’s what I started out writing, and I was living that for a long time.

“Now it’s not me sitting alone by there, looking at the stars on the beach, smoking dope every night; now it’s me putting my kid to bed when I’m at home,” he continues. “I realized at some point that I was fairly happy and that was not a place that I was used to writing from. I dug up previous times and memories to have something to write about and to preserve them for myself.”

Carll bridged past and present most successfully with the Stingaree Music Festival he launched in Crystal Beach last year. For this year’s edition, he lured musical cohorts like Ray Wylie Hubbard, Scott Nolan, Will Kimbrough and Darrell Scott—all involved with the new album—down to his old stomping grounds.

The tired, leathery sag in Carll’s voice may also lead him toward rougher songs. He sounds amused when he talks about how people describe his singing. “The gist is that I have a really strong Southern drawl and I sound intoxicated,” he says. “When I’m singing about those things, maybe those are more believable than if I was singing about the deficit or something. I wouldn’t believe ‘The Pilgrim’ if Mariah Carey was singing it, but when Kris Kristofferson sings it I’m like, ‘Fuck yeah.’ ”

Trouble has one contrite-sounding song that Carll wrote for his wife with Scott—“Willing to Love Again.” “I call it a degenerate love song,” says Carll. “It’s just an apology for the shit I put her through over the years. I just didn’t know how to sing about the redemption part, the thank you. Darrell [Scott] really helped me out.”

If that song’s any indication, Carll will and his own way to talk about love and responsibility. “What I’m trying to do now is evolve a little bit as a writer, and I realize that every song doesn’t have to be about how I’m hammered and lonely,” he says. “I figure if I’m going to do this that it’s [about] capturing all the moments. It just was a tough transition to write about how beautiful my son is or how much I love my wife when it was not something I’d ever done before.”

» www.nashvillescene.com

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Elvis Costello can write a well-wrought song with ease, but he usually doesn’t just throw records out there. “Momofuku,” which takes its name from the inventor of instant noodles, is different. It’s effortfully tossed off; it’s a middling record battling against his built-in high standards.

Verifiable news about “Momofuku” first surfaced on Mr. Costello’s Web site, elviscostello.com, the day of the album’s release on vinyl two weeks ago. (It comes out on CD this week.) The album started, Mr. Costello wrote in his post, when he contributed vocals to Jenny Lewis’s next record, which also included Davey Faragher, Mr. Costello’s regular bass player.

Mr. Costello then brought his drummer, Pete Thomas, into the picture and made his own record in a week, finishing the job less than three months ago. It involved a few other helpers, including Ms. Lewis, the singer-songwriter Johnathan Rice (Ms. Lewis’s boyfriend) and Mr. Thomas’s daughter Tennessee Thomas (also a drummer). Steve Nieve, another member of the Imposters, joined them on keyboards.

From time to time it sounds like Mr. Costello’s early work. “No Hiding Place,” a song about the loss of dignity in the world, flashes the wit and ill-humor of his younger days, though this is a middle-aged man’s complaint. (“You can say anything you want to in your fetching cloak of anonymity,” he sings. “Are you feeling out of breath now, in your desperate pursuit of infamy?”) The Vox organ suffusing “American Gangster Time,” and its drum rhythm, recalls “Radio Radio,” from Mr. Costello’s 1978 album “This Year’s Model”; the “In the Midnight Hour” bass line in “Go Away” sounds like something from “Get Happy!!” from 1980. There are hints of bossa nova and country and sophisticated ’70s pop, though nothing here is a real genre exercise; the album is too low key for that.

For a record bashed out in a week — the kind of album in which the singer says, “Are we rolling?” and indicates to his band when to go to the bridge — “Momofuku” is not bare-bones. It has up to four backup singers and nine musicians at any given time, and sometimes a bit of space noise and backward effects in the guitars — the kind of thing done by indie-rockers with some time on their hands. But Mr. Costello determinedly allows imperfection with a small and squalid electric-guitar tone, his voice cracking and occasionally turning flat.

He is playing from within his own tradition and seemingly trying to make the act sound average and workaday. “Maybe this is nothing but drum and drone,” he sings at one point. “Wanna beat it till I get unknown.”

» www.nytimes.com

Time was you could use the phrase "Texas singer-songwriter" and there'd be no mistaking that you were talking about the literate, rough-hewn, folk- and blues-based songs of Lone Star troubadours like Rodney Crowell and Guy Clark.

Over the past decade or so, though, a new breed of Texas singer-songwriter has emerged — a rowdier, less nuanced tunesmith typified by the frat-friendly likes of Pat Green and Cory Morrow.

A sixth-generation Texan, Hayes Carll might pack the dance halls of his home state like Green and Morrow, but his drawling, finely wrought originals reveal him to have more in common with Crowell and Clark.

"When I started writing, I was (going to college) in Arkansas and there was a Texas music scene that was starting to get rolling that I was completely oblivious to, and I think that's probably for the best," said Carll, alluding to the party-hearty followings of Green and Morrow.

The 32-year-old Texan, whose new album, Trouble in Mind, came out on Nashville-based Lost Highway Records last month, plays the Belcourt Theatre with Canadian kindred spirit Corb Lund on Thursday.

"To me, the Texas music scene was guys like Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett — Lightning Hopkins, too," Carll went on to say. "Those were my influences. It was awhile before I realized that there was this other big scene going on."

Bookings like the Belcourt are still fairly new to Carll, who only graduated to bigger rooms when Little Rock, his self-released second album, started getting airplay on Americana radio in 2005.

"All of a sudden, instead of playing to 30 50-year-olds in a folk club, we could play to 300 people of all ages in a rock or a country bar. For the first few years it was a little frustrating," he admitted, looking back on the years leading to that breakthrough, when he was still a scuffling singer-songwriter. "I was making music and not getting a crowd of any kind, while there were dance halls all across Texas being sold out by lots of other guys.

"In the end, though, it was best, because I wasn't influenced by that stuff. I was influenced maybe by the guys who had a little more depth."

'Not in the dance hits business'

Even the titles of Carll's songs betray his literary ambitions. On Trouble in Mind, for example, there's "Faulkner Street," "Drunken Poet's Dream" (written with Texas real-deal Ray Wylie Hubbard) and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart."

"She Left Me for Jesus," the sardonic blues shuffle that closes the record, might even be worthy of Lubbock iconoclast Terry Allen. Scoffing at Jesus' "freaky" long hair and sandals, the song's bigoted protagonist reckons, "I bet he's a Commie/Or even worse yet, a Jew."

"I wrote that one with a friend of mine, a Nashvillian named Brian Keane," Carll said. "We were talking about a relationship he'd been in. At some point the girl asked him if he was prepared to handle her relationship with Jesus Christ. So we got to thinking, 'Well, what if he wasn't? Or worse, what if he didn't know who Jesus was?'

"So we created this character — an ignorant, prejudiced good ol' boy — and imagined what he would do if he found out his girlfriend was fooling around."

The lean, unvarnished arrangements on Trouble in Mind only deepen the emotional impact of such plainspoken character studies. Recorded at Alex the Great Studios with producer Brad Jones, the album features a heady array of Nashville pickers — everyone from Pat Buchanan, Al Perkins and Will Kimbrough to Dan Baird, Fats Kaplan and George Bradfute.

"We kinda ran the gamut," said Carll, alluding to the mix of session pros and indie types who played on the record. "Whenever it would start to sound a little overproduced or polished, I would pull it back down and remind everybody that I'm not in the dance hits business."

"I started out as a solo singer-songwriter, with just a guitar, playing in bars," he went on to say. "It was all about the songs and the lyrics. Obviously, you want to put great music behind 'em, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't weighted down with walls of sound."

» www.tennessean.com

Never mind his Irish-British heritage, Elvis Costello truly is the King of America, or at least American music, as his 1995 album implies. Master of the poisonous put-down, wielder of heartbreak melodies - he is equal parts Buddy Holly, Burt Bacharach and Gram Parsons, with a patented sneer that has aged in its sweet bitterness like fine wine. His continued musical impact has gone light years beyond even his namesake's influence.

Still, at this point in Costello's career, it would be unfair to expect of the man anything as raw and rapturous as This Year's Model or bruised and delicately crafted as Blood & Chocolate. But as his latest album confirms, Costello has absolutely no intention of resting on his laurels.

Momofuku, curiously named for the inventor of instant noodles, finds Costello relevant as ever. Opting for a non-traditional release (as so many artists have of late), he chose to release the album on vinyl two weeks prior to today's CD release, offering purchasers a download code to go with their long players.

Whatever your preferred format might be, Costello's latest surpasses his post-Attractions output as the most cohesive album he has cut in over a decade. Back together with The Imposters (which features two of his original Attractions members), the 53-year-old musician comes across invigorated and ready to challenge himself.

In what could turn out to be 2008's most musically beneficial reciprocation, Momofuku came out of Costello's involvement with the forthcoming Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley) solo album. Welcoming the new blood, The Imposters integrate Lewis and her guitarist/beau Johnathan Rice on several tracks. Be it Costello's or the Lewis/Rice camp's influence, Momofuku sounds as if a fresh set of ears had some input in shaping the songs.

The album is both cohesive and exhaustive in covering Costello's many faces. There is a discerning adoration for his best work applied throughout, with the benefit of hindsight and just the right amount of tinkering.

Aging gracefully does not mean turning the amps down or forgoing exploration. "Stella Hurt" rages its way into a swirl of reverberated organs and guitars, pounding away into a deep, hypnotic groove. Pushing the six-minute mark, "Turpentine" stretches out over a pseudo-Bo Diddley beat into a psychedelic mash-up.

"You did everything to me that stops short of murder," Costello sings. His caustic wit has not been dulled in the slightest by the years passed. The somewhat inevitable notes of middle-aged nostalgia and sentiment creep in on "My Three Sons," as Costello imparts some fatherly love and wisdom. The lyrical content of the song diverts from the rest of the material, not to mention its relative weakness.

After 30 years of elevating his craft, it is pretty safe to say Costello has earned the right to a musical Hallmark moment here and there. And as far as indulgences go, "My Three Sons" is nothing extravagant. Elsewhere on Momofuku, the man is all business.

On "American Gangster Time," Costello and Imposters members Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas revisit their fantastic late-'70s output. The warm analog recording and the singer's well-weathered voice completely belie the time passed in between The Attractions' earlier albums and Momofuku.

The piano-led number "Mr. Feathers" could have easily been a stripped-down demo from the Imperial Bedroom sessions, while the mournful Americana on "Song with Rose" (co-written with Rosanne Cash) recalls King of America with a dose of Roy Orbison added to the mix. Touches of teary pedal-steel (courtesy of Lewis associate "Farmer" Dave Scher) connect the dots across Momofuku, adding a bit of musical continuity to the eclecticism.

Just within the opener alone, "No Hiding Place," Costello flips through nearly every page in his hefty songbook. Lewis, Rice and company lend their vocals here and through most of the album, rounding out the collaborative feeling. The young guns could not feel any more natural rubbing elbows with the old-timers, especially when Lewis harmonizes on the chorus of album closer "Go Away," a simple classic of a Costello tune.

Any diehard Costello fan could fantasize endlessly over the possibilities of any continued Lewis collaborations - live duets on "I Want You" or "Indoor Fireworks," anyone? Hopefully they will cross those bridges when they come to them, but for now, the fruitful Momofuku is plenty to be thankful for.

No less impassioned a performer than he was three decades ago, Costello clearly has plenty left to offer. He has inspired punk rockers, barroom crooners, shit-kickers with acoustic guitars and almost everyone else in between. Momofuku is simply one more incredibly enjoyable reason Costello is pop music.

"I'm a limited, primitive kind of man," he sings on the barebones tune "Drum and Bone." Self-effacing humor or not, the statement could not be farther from the truth.

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Ever since the brilliant sprint of Elvis Costello's first four or five albums, fans have been pining for the proverbial return to form.

Over the years, there have been plenty of contenders ‹ 2002's When I Was Cruel and 2004's Delivery Man are the most recent ‹ but Costello tends to lose himself in ambitious genre exercises, attempting, with mixed results, to master everything from country to classical.

Momofuku, named either for the inventor of instant noodles or a hip New York City eatery, was cut in a week by Costello, the Imposters (his classic Attractions lineup, less bassist Bruce Thomas) and a cast of young ringers, including Jenny Lewis and Jonathan Rice.

The album is available as a digital download, two-LP set or regular CD. But it's the vinyl format that best suits it's loose, organic feel.

Costello is as tuneful as ever, and whether he's revisiting his rock past (No Hiding Place) or playing the leader of a dark lounge band (Harry Worth), he's relaxed and in his element.

The new songs aren't exactly rock, pop, alt-country or neo-new wave, though they contain elements of those. Even if not as essential as his masterpieces, Momofuku is unmistakably an Elvis Costello record.

If you go Elvis Costello & the Imposters open for the Police at 7:30 p.m.
May 17 at Cruzan Amphitheatre, 601-7 Sansbury's Way, West Palm Beach.Tickets $50-$225; ticketmaster.com.

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Elvis Costello forced his fans into the wayback machine for his latest release.

Over the last two weeks, devotees could only hear the new music by buying it on vinyl - an ancient substance known only to those over 50 or anyone employed as a hip-hop DJ.

Starting today, Costello lets the rest of humanity fast-forward to the modern age. Finally you can download the disk to your heart's content, or even buy it in the moderately old-fashioned form of a CD.

As a Luddite protest - or an attention-getting gimmick - Costello's move shows pluck and resolve. The stunt also has the scope of conceptual art, allowing listeners to ponder the past as they fondle the gaping gatefold package of "Momofuku" and listen to wizened needles scrape through its modern grooves. To ensure the best possible sound - regardless of how stinky the system that we play it on - Costello released the songs on two vinyl slabs, letting the grooves breathe and resonate.

Costello didn't only reference the past in the album's form, but in its content (remember content?). "Momofuku" sounds a lot like an Elvis Costello album from his own vinyl age. A hard-rocking record, the disk could be slipped right between "Get Happy" and "Trust" (circa 1981) and not be out of place.

That's got to be a good thing. Here's an even better one: Costello didn't just try to re-create an older sound. For this project, he gathered a bunch of younger artists (including the wonderful couple Jenny Lewis and Jonathan Rice) to warble along, forming a choir that gives the songs a rich new sheen. Think "Trust" as backed by Fleetwood Mac.

Costello and the gang wrote and recorded these pieces in a flash, which explains why he named the album after the guy who pioneered the fast-food phenom of ramen noodles.

Luckily, the resulting disk doesn't feel tossed off, but fresh. Its brisk tunes, dense lyrics and passionate performances would excite listeners no matter how they hear them.

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How does Elvis Costello do it? In the past four years alone, pop's reigning renaissance man has released a killer rock album ("The Delivery Man"), an eloquent collaboration with New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint ("The River in Reverse"), and a live recording with a Dutch jazz orchestra ("My Flame Burns Blue").

Today Costello gives us "Momofuku," titled in tribute to the inventor of the Cup Noodle, and this collection goes down as easy and tasty as its namesake's ingenious snack. Costello and the Imposters recorded and mixed the whole project in a week, inspired by a fast, loose session he sang on for Jenny Lewis's forthcoming album. And Lewis returns the favor, supplying harmonies all over "Momofuku," which is frontloaded with the sort of whip-smart, rough-and-tumble pop songs the artist built his name on.

Brimming with hooks and guitars galore, the album - released two weeks ago on vinyl and in stores and online today - flirts with samba ("Harry Worth"), soft-shoe ("Mr. Feathers"), and jazzy blues ("Flutter & Wow"). There's a folksy ballad ("My Three Sons"), a sinuous rocker ("Stella Hurt"), and a petulant, lo-fi closer called "Go Away" that captures Costello at his most uncalculated and appealing. A few tracks sound like demos; "Drum & Bone" is a scrappy wisp. But Costello sings it like an excitable boy who has found a new box of toys.

Elvis Costello opens for the Police at the Tweeter Center July 31.

» www.boston.com

In naming his new album after instant noodle inventor Momofuku Ando, Elvis Costello may be suggesting parallels to the project’s simple recipe and quick completion.

While whimsical and easy to digest, Momofuku is anything but hot-plate dorm grub (though its initially pressing is on old-fashioned platters, vinyl lovers will be thrilled to learn). Costello has crafted a batch of substantial, personal, clever, melodic songs that fit comfortably alongside his most serious work.

Only this isn’t his most serious work. A sense of glee permeates every track, seeping even into the bile and rumination of reflective passages. Costello seems revitalized, brimming with mirth and mischief, in scrappy rockers (the funk-plied Stella Hurt), soulful romantic ballads (Flutter & Wow) and loping singer/songwriter yarns (Song With Rose). He’s not just using his noodle. He’s stirring it up. — Edna Gundersen

Download: Turpentine, Stella Hurt, American Gangster Time, Harry Worth
Consider: Mr. Feathers, No Hiding Place, Drum & Bone

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In 1988 I had switched to cassettes because they were more portable. Like many other music fans, I now see the error in my ways considering the sound quality of vinyl is superior to that of those flimsy, chewable walkman-cloggers. In 1992 I switched to CDs and never looked back.

Why do I mention all of this? Elvis Costello decided unusually to release his new album “Momofuku” (his 24th proper one at my count) on vinyl only. Before you longtime fans panic and worry about whether your dusty turntable has a needle that’s up to snuff, fear not. For a mere two weeks it is available on vinyl only. A CD version will be released on May 6th. Plus when you buy it on vinyl, you get a code to download a digital version. That code won’t work though until the first of May. Thus, for a nice change of speed, I had to review this album the old fashioned way.

If you will pardon me for a moment, I’d like to say something about the medium itself. I’d forgotten how glorious records truly are. Sure, they are big and clunky, but as I first gazed at the immense “Momofuku” in all its purple-y goodness, I was awe-struck. Suddenly my childhood memories of being virtually glued to my old record player came flooding back. Sure, they are kind of a pain to turn over, but records have a strange sense of nostalgia to them. I remember being excited as a small boy wondering what every label would look like. (Maybe I was a strange kid in that way.)

Anyway, enough reminiscing. You really are here because you want to know how good “Momofuku” is. It’s excellent! One of his best! I don’t say that lightly, either. It’s obvious on first listen that the reason why he decided to set the record off with an initial vinyl-only strategy was because this is a classic-level Elvis Costello record. He surely wanted to remind his listeners of the first time they listened to “My Aim Is True” or “This Year’s Model.” This is not Elvis Costello experimenting with his classical side. It is an old-school Elvis Costello record with occasionally loud guitars, plenty of bile and a bit of punctuating organ here and there. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a full-tilt rock album, because it does have its softer, more reflective moments, but so do the two classics listed above. Costello is a songwriter and he tends to like to write lyrically dense material. Sometimes you need a softer backdrop to tell a story. Like his 2002 masterpiece, “When I Was Cruel” and his 1994 rocker “Brutal Youth,” this album finds Costello in a very familiar comfortable place. All the albums I have just listed each have their own distinct sound, and “Momofuku” continues that line, but the truth is, each one has showcased Costello the rock star. (Albeit, a rock star who can write more literate rock songs than your average seething curmudgeon-y social critic.)

“Momofuku” moves in waves. It shows his stunning range well in that way. Interestingly enough, the progression almost shifts with each record side. The album has 12 tracks spread across 2 records. Thus, there are 4 sides with 3 tracks per side.

Side one shows him at his rocking best. “No Hiding Place” sets the pace well as one of his most melodic rockers, delivered sweetly one moment while telling someone off the next. Such moodiness is summed up well within the first few lines. “In the not very distant future / When everything will be free / There won’t be any cute secrets / Or any novelty.” His tone is accusatory, telling his subject at one point “Whatever I said about you, I couldn’t say it behind your back.” The angry man is back and he’s just as sharp as ever. Thankfully, he hasn’t aged that much either. It helps that the band is as tight as they’ve always been. After all, his current band, the Imposters are really just the Attractions minus bassist Bruce Thomas. In his place is one-time Cracker bassist Davey Faragher. With drummer Pete Thomas pounding away and keyboardist Steve Nieve playing his Wurlitzer, it’s almost like old-times.

“American Gangster Time” begins a punked-up romp through Clubland 2008. It starts with his subject casing a woman offering him pills. His descriptions are somewhat acerbic and coated in unforgiving detail. He’s an observer but he obviously isn’t too keen on where he is. All at once, the lyrical tone recalls both “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” and “This Year’s Girl.” Again as the guitars get louder, his ace melody remains indelible. The chorus is full of good old-“Radio Radio” organ pep. The subject changes throughout the track, but the refrain of “I’d rather go blind for speaking my mind,” proves to be his credo. Thankfully, he has never had a problem on that front.

“Turpentine” continues the rock-show. It goes back and forth from skim-worthy sonic murk to a grade-A, rousing chorus. In fact, the chorus gives the track one of the most memorable melodies on the record. Then it devolves wonderfully into a loud basher. It’s as if Costello built up something beautiful just so he could gleefully destroy it. Such a progression is strongly executed.

Like many others on this record, “Turpentine” features Rilo Kiley front-woman Jenny Lewis on harmony vocals and singer-songwriter Johnathan Rice playing with the band. According to “Billboard,” this album stemmed from Costello’s work with Lewis and Rice on Lewis’ upcoming solo album. Costello is a giant who has never been afraid to work with other people. He has great taste in collaborators, thus it is no doubt an honor. I’m reminded of his great work a decade or so back with Aimee Mann. He only tends to work with the best, and on Rilo Kiley’s last album “Under the Blacklight,” Lewis proved herself worthy. It’ll be interesting to see what their collaboration brings.

Now it is time to take a breather and turn the record over. People used to have to do this all the time before 15,000 song ipods! As I get up from my chair, I momentarily find that little factual nugget staggering!

Side two offers the first monumental change. “Harry Worth” does not rock. Rather, it is a sort of slow-ish samba, tropicalia-infused number with wonderfully cheesy organ work. It’s the kind of track you can imagine an old couple dancing to in a bright-yellow motel room. Maybe the reason I picture a couple is because that’s exactly who the song is about. It begins “I met them first on their wedding night.” It describes this couple’s married life, with a knowing sense of impending darkness. (“Do you hear that noise? Well that once was our song!”) It makes pretty clear that this couple is doomed. In lesser hands, the song could have come off schmaltzy, but Costello gives it an appropriate amount of venom, thus counter-acting the pitch-perfect old-school back-up chorus of vocalists. It’s a stunner with all its kitschiness intact.

“Drum & Bone” plays like a softer sequel to Costello’s hit “Monkey to Man” from his 2004 album “The Delivery Man,” even down to its rockabilly tone and references to human evolution. It worked well the first time and it works well here again.

When I first read the title “Flutter & Wow,” I thought of Stereolab’s song “Wow & Flutter,” but the two are of course very different. Costello’s “Flutter & Wow” is a majestic attempt at a classic soul love ballad. It’s the kind of thing Otis Redding excelled in. Costello scores quite well. He constantly challenges himself and comes out on top. Showing his often scarce sweet and romantic side, he delivers yet another winner.

Time to switch records and begin what is effectively the third side.

“Stella Hurt” is a full-blown rock song, which initially sounds like a revved-up answer to Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady,” and then becomes a rhythmic dance number. No wonder it is so funky, the song features drum-work from both Pete Thomas and his daughter Tennessee Thomas who drums in the buzz-worthy band the Like. Within the first few lines Costello is at his word-find best mentioning everything from “red galoshes” to “gutters full of suicides.” By the end of the track, it becomes an interesting, angry sounding noise experiment, until very abruptly, it ends with little advance notice. As always, such volatility is welcome.

Next is “Mr. Feathers.” The change is tone is remarkable from one track to the next. “Stella Hurt” is like a bunch of kids loose in the garage whereas “Mr. Feathers” is the kind of old, tin-pan alley-style number the Beatles would have maybe put on “The White Album.”

“My Three Sons” is not a saxophone number. Odds are if it were to have a music video, it wouldn’t merely consist of animated toe-tapping. Instead, it is a first rate, reflective country-tinged ballad. Within one side, Costello has taken the playbook and thrown out any sort of formula. This is the exact reason he still, rather consistently continues to make quality work.

Time to turn the record over again for the forth and last side.

“Song With Rose” borders on alt-country but stays mostly in the mid-tempo singer-songwriter mold. If this were the mid-eighties, this might have been some sort of over-produced pop number on “Punch the Clock.” Thankfully, Costello’s current taste in instrumentation is much more natural, earthy and timeless, thus the song is left alone and delivered in an unfussy way. Stylistically this is the closest the album gets towards the softer side of Rilo Kiley.

Next is “Pardon Me, Madam, My Name is Eve,” a standout track depicting Eve about to throw-down on a woman trying to steal Adam away from her. It’s somehow both mildly comical and sad at the same time. It’s heartbreaking when Eve realizes she’s probably being pushed away. “In another time of life, when I was his only wife./ When I was his only bride. / Before I was torn out from his side.”

On his first three albums, Costello always went out with a hit single. “My Aim Is True” closed with “Watching the Detectives.” “This Year’s Model” closed with “Radio Radio.” “Armed Forces” closed with “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” (That last one may have been last because it was tacked on, considering that the track was originally credited to “Nick Lowe and his Sound” and wasn’t originally supposed to be on the album.) On “Momofuku,” Costello continues this line of single-worthy closers, with “Go Away.” The track fades in and is built around an organ line delivered by “Farmer” Dave Scher. It sounds like the kind of soulful organ exercise one would come up with after listening to a lot of Booker T. & the M.G.s. Here, Costello and Jenny Lewis sing together a perfect upbeat kiss-off. (“Go away! Go Away! Why don’t you go Away? Why don’t you come back, baby? Why don’t you go away?”) It would’ve been a fun Blues Brothers number. Leaving on such an upbeat high note leaves you wanting more, almost guaranteeing immediate repeat listens.

In closing, there isn’t a weak track on “Momofuku.” It’s Elvis Costello completely in his element. It’s a clear five star example of a legend adding to his stack of classics. Here’s someone who has worked for the past 31 years with no large, significant breaks, honing his craft, creating a diverse catalogue for the ages. “Momofuku” is a worthy addition to any Elvis Costello fan’s collection.

Oh, and my guess is that you are probably wondering about the name. In a Billboard interview posted just yesterday on their site, he claims that the album is named after Momofuku Ando, who invented the first cup noodle. He states the album happened very easily, saying, “All we had to do to make this record was add water.” That quote is strikingly cornball for someone who usually is so cerebral. One could also take it with a sort of bitingly snotty, almost patronizing edge, but the truth is, Costello and his band make this album seem so wonderfully effortless, that somehow you don’t doubt him in the least, no matter what absurd thing he tells the press.

The return to vinyl makes for a surprisingly improved experience. Perhaps Costello’s trying to make a statement in a download-obsessed world. The physical product is getting to be almost a forgotten joy. We must not lose it! Perhaps there’s an off-chance he’s also trying to make it easier for some forward-thinking hip-hop producer like Danger Mouse to merge his song “American Gangster Time” with some unused Jay-Z verses. (If that were to actually happen, that would be pretty funny!.)

I’m glad that in a week I can download the album in digital form. I’m also glad that in two weeks it hits CD racks. By then, I’ll probably have begun to wear out my vinyl copy. It’s that good!

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There’s nothing “nu” about 24-year-old Londoner Johnny Flynn’s take on folk. Banjos twang, fiddles reel and Flynn sings rustic lines such as, “I’m a plough and you’re a furrow/I’m a fox and you’re a burrow” (on stomping jig “Sally”) in an ancient, careworn voice. Ultra-traditional sounds coming from such a fresh-faced lad could be artful pastiche (he has toured as a Shakespearean actor and appeared at London’s Old Vic theatre after all), yet the emotion he invests in campfire ballads such as “Brown Trout Blues” and “Shore To Shore” is compelling evidence that he means it.

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DOWNLOAD: “Brown Trout Blues”

It's a myth that personal pain is essential to making great music, just as it's untrue that an artist wracked with inner turmoil is more likely to produce memorable work than one who is happy and well-adjusted.

But the tortured-artist syndrome may provide a crucial link between Shelby Lynne and the late Dusty Springfield, whom Lynne salutes on her splendid new album, "Just a Little Lovin'."

The two were born an ocean apart – Springfield in England, Lynne in Virginia. Springfield (born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien) died of cancer in 1999, a year before Lynne (born Shelby Lynne Moorer) released her Grammy-winning breakthrough album, "I Am Shelby Lynne."

Springfield, who was 59 at the time of her death, endured long battles with drugs and alcohol. Although she generally shunned the spotlight when not on stage, she was also torn by the conflict between her strict Catholic upbringing and her bisexual leanings.

Lynne, 39, was just 17 when her father, who had a drinking problem, shot her mother to death and then killed himself. The 1986 murder/suicide took place in front of the family's home, which Lynne and her younger sister, Allison Moorer, were inside of at the time. Lynne married at 18, but divorced barely two years later. Her romantic life has been a closed book ever since.

Now a Palm Springs-area resident, she performs here Sunday night at the Belly Up Tavern with her four-man band. Lynne contends that music, not the pain beneath it, is what drew her to Springfield's body of work.

"I didn't know her as a person and I don't believe anything I read. The books written about her – I don't believe any of it," Lynne said in a phone interview last month from her desert home. "I just believe in the music and what she did to me, as a fan of hers."

Songs popularized by Springfield have been covered by numerous other artists, from the White Stripes and Elvis Costello ("I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself") to Aretha Franklin and Joss Stone ("Son of a Preacher Man"). But apart from the 2000 tribute album, "Forever Dusty," which featured such acts as the Indigo Girls, Jill Sobule and The Butchies, no solo artist in memory has paid homage to Springfield with an entire album.

Yet, even if several dozen other established performers were to salute Springfield on record, it's unlikely any of them could do so with such a winning combination of skill, sensitivity and grace.

Rather than ape the brassy, big-beat productions that fueled the aural melodrama of many of Springfield's albums, Lynne and veteran producer Phil Ramone instead opted for a spare, deliberately understated approach. Likewise, she doesn't try to mimic Springfield's singing, instead opting to feature her own, equally distinctive approach to phrasing, timing and inflection.

The softly sensual results showcase Lynne's husky voice and impeccable dynamic control, without a hint of flash or a single wasted note. Her nuanced performances are a marvel of soulful restraint and interpretative excellence.

"Dusty's recordings were done at a time when everything – the singers, the horns, the strings, the arrangements – was all really big," Lynne said.

"It was the way they did things then. So, I knew not to make that (kind of) record again. If a song is strong, melodically and lyrically, as long as you keep respectfully in the same vein the song was created, you can put your own vibe and stamp on it. That's what I did. We took these songs on as new songs; we weren't bound by her versions at all."

Four of the 10 selections on "Just a Little Lovin' " are drawn from Springfield's classic 1969 album, "Dusty in Memphis." To her credit, Lynne didn't even consider doing that album's standout track, "Son of a Preacher Man," citing simple common sense.

"That's Dusty's song!" she said. "It's Grade A. I couldn't cut it, because I couldn't do it better.

"What I wanted to accomplish is to be able to sing these songs and remind people about Dusty's great voice and career again. And, at the same time, maybe some people who weren't familiar with her, might hear her."

Lynne herself was a latecomer to Springfield's music, which she first heard about 15 years ago while living in Nashville.

Intriguingly, it was during this same period that she was also exposed to the work of Al Green and the John Lennon-led Plastic Ono Band. The cumulative affect of hearing these three iconic artists in close succession was liberating for Lynne, who soon vowed to leave Nashville.

At the time, she was frustrated by the stifling creative restraints placed on her by the country-music establishment in general and by her record company specifically.

"I didn't discover Dusty until I'd already been making records for years," said Lynne, who was signed by Epic Records in 1989 and released five albums prior to "I Am Shelby Lynne" belatedly made her a star in 2000.

"I discovered Dusty and Al Green about the same time and I'm really influenced by what I listen to. I was really struck by her honesty and the way she could sell a song. I didn't know she was British when I first heard her. I just thought she was a white soul singer."

That's also a good description of Lynne, who cites "making important, good records and trying to and stay alive" as her biggest goals.

"I'm not really one to give advice," she said. "But you don't just wake up one day, and say: 'Oh, I'm going to be a singer!' You either are or you aren't.

"I was probably 4 or 5 when I knew I'd be a singer. Because that's what I d