Junky Star

'Bingham's work on the Crazy Heart soundtrack found him working with producer T-Bone Burnett, who produced Bingham's third album, the new Junky Star. This is Bingham's record, a showcase for his tightening songwriting and singular vocals, but it also carries all the hallmarks of a Burnett project, which means, of course, that it sounds terrific. Burnett's method on Junky Star is to keep things musically direct and to pare Bingham's ballads down to their most basic elements. The great accomplishment of Burnett's work within the roots genre is how timeless, as in impossible to date, they sound. It's a common goal - to make recordings sound old since everyone loves the sonic quality of dusty old country records - yet Burnett is unique in his sense of restraint, something he pushed further this year on the Nelson and, especially, the Mellencamp records. He doesn't go quite that far with Junky Star, but his influence is obvious on a set of road-weary tunes that represent the most somber collection from Bingham yet . . . The record's best songs are also tell the best stories: "Hallelujah," one of the album's most polished melodies, is told from the point of view of a murdered man who is caught between worlds, realizing that his faith in heaven was misplaced but who can't return to his earthly loved one either. "Yesterday's Blues" is a Nebraska-style folk ballad, the album's most direct love song. The title cut is a story of a farmer's plight - a story Bingham knows first hand - but one that takes a tragic turn into murder and addiction: "I borrowed a quarter for a call to the other side/Told God that the whole damn world was waiting around to die." The album's best tune is "Depression," finding the narrator getting out of some bullshit town or another that's going down in flames, reaching the album's most powerful moment: "I'd rather lay down in a pine box/than to sell my heart to a fuckin' wasteland."' - Steve Leftridge / Pop Matters