Long Way Home from Anywhere

Bruce Robison is a competent singer and performer, but a very good songwriter, which tends to make his albums sound like publishing demos. This is certainly true of his third record, on which he wrote or co-wrote seven of the ten songs. Robison knows the universe of the country song-bars, trucks, love gone wrong-but his eye for detail and the subtlety of his plotting put his compositions a cut above the rest. In "Drivin' All Night Long," an apologetic lover contemplates a head-on collision but restrains himself in consideration of the other driver's own loved one. "Just Married" begins full of love and contentment and ends that way, too, but in between, life gets hard-"I feel the chill of the early fall / I see the picture on the wall"-until the singer reveals that his bride can't stand him anymore. A great singer could make more of these songs than the songwriter himself does, however, and so could a great producer (he produced the record, too). Long Way Home From Anywhere may not make a star out of Bruce Robison, but they should be listening to it on Music Row.