Review: Justin Townes Earle album recorded in Asheville is ‘brilliant’

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From Something Else!, which calls the album brilliant. Here’s a tidbit:

Credit Justin Townes Earle for refusing to stick with the tried and true, even after his critically acclaimed 2010 release Harlem River Blues shot to No. 50 on the Billboard charts and earned a song of the year award at last year’s Americana Music Awards.

Instead of sticking with that folk-meets-blues-meets-early country formula, Earle and longtime collaborator Skylar Wilson scuff things up a healthy dollop of Memphis soul on Nothing’s Going to Change The Way You Feel About Me Now, a raw and rangy 10-track release due March 27 from Bloodshot Records that was recorded live over four days at an Asheville, North Carolina, studio fashioned from an abandoned church. (That would be Echo Mountain Studio.)

Maybe it’s no surprise at all, though, considering all that Earle (son of Steve Earle, named after one of his dad’s principal heroes in Townes Van Zandt) has already done to distinguish himself over four previous albums. He may share a hard-luck lifestyle with the elder Earle, including bouts with addiction and some time in jail, but his is a far more restive, centered muse.

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