At this point, Steve Earle's so-called redemption has lasted longer than anything he needed to redeem himself for. His boldface trajectory reads like a classic "Behind the Music" episode: A successful first album (1986's Grammy-winning "Guitar Town") made after being dropped by another label; a nasty burnout on heroin, booze and a tangle of ex-wives; emergence from hell and a new career rolling with such other not-quite-country greats as Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow. But you won't find Earle on VH1; his downfall wasn't the result of indulgence in the rock perks but an eerie withdrawal from a musician's public life into a lonely place where he could define himself by his addictions, not his talents.
Since 1996's "I Feel Alright," Earle's been recording, touring, writing songs -- even a book -- and generally behaving himself to the extent that it's hard to think of him as the raw-voiced mess of 10 years ago. Still, country music has always embraced its dark side, and if Earle's most impressive strength is his ability to recognize the essences of a song without caring too much about its genre, that has also been what keeps him on the SoundScan margins. "Sidetracks" is an excellent overview of an artist who traffics in variety with such ease and understanding that he can't by any means be called a dilettante. A collection of tracks that never made it onto Earle's other full-length records, some contributions to tribute albums or benefit releases andsoundtrack numbers, "Sidetracks" shows how a singer with a searching mind and singular voice can make any style uniquely his own.
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Just as the first three songs -- mellow soundtrack contributions -- lull the listener with their comfortable twangy rock full of oversize images and an undertow of dense emotion, Earle unleashes a cover of the reggae classic "Johnny Too Bad," recorded with the band the V-roys, toaster C-Fax and reggae singers RNT. Despite the circular Jamaican rhythms that drive it, this tale of a bad boy in a worse town is as close to Earle's heart and experience as his own early hit single "Copperhead Road," and a prime example of his ability to spot the sound of being truly down. The voice of the outsiderreappears on "Time Has Come Today," the Chambers Brothers' Summer of Love chestnut Earle recorded with Sheryl Crow for the soundtrack of "Steal This Movie," a film biography of Abbie Hoffman, and on the Flying Burrito Brothers protest song "My Uncle."
Of course, the sound of being up is just as universal. "Dominic Street," recorded with the accordion-led Dublin band the Woodchoppers, is a loose-limbed instrumental workout in which everyone plays with such effortless groove that the resulting whole is more joyous than its parts. He makes a beautiful mess of Nirvana's "Breed," sounding both less numb and less angry than Kurt Cobain but somehow more desperate, his voice racing and slashing a half-tick behind the music. Earle's raw, deceptively approximate vocals have always disguised his meticulously calibrated phrasing -- his endearing nasality advances and retreats throughout the racing rocker "Creepy Jackalope Eye," allowing the backing band, the Supersuckers, to weigh in with equal strength. And a cover of Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" finds him sounding strained and tense -- as he points out in the liner notes, the arrangement is not quite in his key -- and properly haunted by the melancholy of memory. "Sidetracks" wasn't assembled with the deliberation of a full studio album, but its strange jumble of genres unspooling the twin themes of rebellion and verve may make it the definitive Steve Earle product.
(To hear a free Sound Bite from this album, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8151.)
