That Lonesome Song

iTunes Review

“Tour de force” might sound like a highfalutin phrase to apply to a hard country album, but it definitely fits Jamey Johnson’s That Lonesome Song. This gruff-voiced Alabama native is the genuine article: a tough-as-nails ex-Marine who writes and sings songs of remarkable intimacy and even tenderness. Comparisons with Waylon Jennings are unavoidable; tunes like “The Door is Always Open,” “Women,” and “High Cost of Living” invoke the battered romanticism of Waylon’s ‘70s heyday. But Johnson is far more than your garden-variety outlaw. There’s a keen-eyed intelligence to his songwriting and a working-class veracity to his vocals that lift him beyond the generic. Especially fine are “In Color” (an unsparing look at the not-so good old days), “Mary Go Round” (a quietly tragic portrait of love gone wrong), and “The Last Cowboy” (a toast to vanishing heroes). Johnson can get gritty with the best of them, as the mud-caked “Mowin’ Down the Roses” shows. But he truly excels at haunting, pain-wracked ballads — “Angel” and especially “Dreaming My Dreams with You” are powerful, unsettling stuff. A work of bruised, hardscrabble beauty, Johnson’s Lonesome Song deserves to win him many admirers.