Bouncing back from his first, abortive major-label experience with the shuttered imprint, lands on another custom label, 's , for his fifth album overall, . And he just keeps doing what he does, which is producing a lightened version of the kind of Texas singer/songwriter honky tonk music typical of and . 's primary subject is the difficulty of communication between lovers, a topic he pursues in songs like But his better songs are more specific, and often seem to derive from their opening lines. in which a son criticizes his father for abandoning the family, begins, "Where in hell did you go, " while in which the singer addresses a man whose automobile he may or may not have torched, starts with, "I don't give a damn that your car's on fire." They tell stories that grab you right away, and they're good enough that you wish 's songs were all that good and wonder why they're not. ~ William Ruhlmann