Dwight Yoakam: Tomorrow's Sounds Today

Some country singers ought to be legally required to cut at least one album that distills their music down to the elemental sound of a human voice and an acoustic guitar. Perhaps because they tend to have country's purest voices—and are less bound by commercial considerations—the genre's traditionalists seem most likely to give it a try, and the results are usually stellar. Johnny Cash's searing American Recordings represents the past decade's most powerful testament to that approach, but Dwight Yoakam's outstanding (though mystifyingly titled and packaged) dwightyoakamacoustic.net also merits consideration. Running through more than two dozen of the California singer's best-loved songs, the album features Yoakam at his most bracing and direct. Tomorrow's Sounds Today returns to a more conventional approach, with 14 full-band songs replete with strings, slides, and electric guitars. As is frequently the case, however, more is less, with Yoakam settling for modestly ambling charmers in lieu of transcendent moments. Fortunately, those middling pleasures are plentiful, with "What Do You Know About Love," "Love Caught Up To Me," and especially "Free To Go" coasting along on their breezy charms. The misfires get a bit more frequent as the album progresses, with the stilted, dreary "For Love's Sake" giving way to the excessively affected twang of "The Heartaches Are Free." But the good outweighs the bad, with bonus points for what Yoakam calls "Bonus Bucks": "Alright, I'm Wrong" and "I Was There" are fine, album-closing duets with Yoakam's idol Buck Owens. If any singer should consider an exclusively voice-and-guitar album, it's Texas' "Pavarotti Of The Plains," the great Don Walser. An affable sixtysomething with a powerhouse voice and a gift for yodeling, Walser makes charming, classic music, fueled by an intensely reverent love of old-fashioned country. Unfortunately, his albums make you wish he'd periodically shed his loyalty to his fine but predictable Pure Texas Band—and the musical boilerplate it tends to bring to the table—and let his voice stand alone. I'll Hold You In My Heart isn't that album, but it's still eminently lovable, setting its folksy/showy tone on the appropriately titled opening track, "Yodeling The Blues." The lovely title song (drawn from the soundtrack to The Hi-Lo Country) shows Walser's less playful side, covering Eddy Arnold's late-'40s country classic, while gorgeous covers such as "When It's Springtime In The Rockies" are similarly, effortlessly timeless. I'll Hold You In My Heart closes with "Country Gold," a contemporary ode to traditional country that reserves its most potent line for Walser's album notes: "I have been singing country music for over 40 years and all of a sudden I am listed as alternative country. Where do they get off" Those words are decisive enough to make you forgive Walser's adherence to predictable arrangements: It's not artistic stasis, it's a full-blown statement. God bless him. (Valley Entertainment, 1807 Second St., #101, Santa Fe, NM 87505)