Watch: JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE 'Midnight at the Movies' music video

Justin Townes Earle || MP3
Earle’s sophomore record and third overall release, Midnight at the Movies, his best and most thorough work. It’s as if he extracted the emotional transparency and simplicity from his self-released EP, Yuma, and mixed that with the hints of rockabilly and studio finesse of his debut album, The Good Life. The result is a nearly flawless, organic LP. And he makes it all sound so easy on tracks like “They Killed John Henry” and “Halfway to Jackson,” which mainly revolve around some hurried acoustic finger plucking, with a couple of other non-invasive instruments like a harmonica or standup bass to round it all out. Even Earle’s unexpected take on the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait” sounds as if Paul Westerberg had written it for this very album. – Paste Magazine

This Nashville-reared New Yorker gets his last name from his dad (country-rock veteran Steve Earle) and his middle name from his dad's hero (folk-country legend Townes Van Zandt). Put that shit in pop terms — "Hey, Rebecca Madonna Jackson, what's your new record sound like?" — and you can see why the dude might go cross-eyed at questions regarding his legacy and the roots-music tradition he's inherited. (Not that Earle doesn't court some of the familial talk that comes his way: "I am my father's son," he sings in "Mama's Eyes," a track from last year's Midnight at the Movies.) Still, it must be said: As heard on Movies and its fine 2008 predecessor, The Good Life, Earle's stuff does indeed split the difference between his dad's bar-band abandon and Van Zandt's prairie-Zen introspection. He can't decide whether he wants to love or fight, think or act — so he does it all - Mikael Wood, LA Weekly