Powerglide

Powerglide is a barroom jugular, a cred-rich country-rock great that’s rarely listed among country-rock greats. Even if you ignore the guest list here (which includes Rolling Stones running bud Nicky Hopkins and The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann), you can’t ignore the band’s songs, which easily rival anything by The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons, or early Poco. While this album (the New Riders' second) had three different lead singers, guitarist John Dawson’s vocal sweetness wins the melancholy-meets-joy sweepstakes. Listen to him soothe his own restive heart (“Lochnivar”) and then serve up another’s in a classic, comic murder ballad (“Duncan and Brady”). The old-timey picker rhythm of “Sweet Loving One” sounds like a revamp of a timeless Bob Wills classic, while the fitting opener, “Dim Lights Thick Smoke,” is a resounding revamp of an old Joe Maphis classic. Even by-the-numbers takes of “Hello Mary-Lou” and “Willie and the Hand Jive” manage to ride shotgun to the other tunes here simply on the strength of Buddy Cage’s ringing pedal steel and wonderfully scratch-ass dobro playing.