Review
Trouble in Mind
(Lost Highway)
Release Date: 04/08/2008 12:00
Reviewed by Robert Christgau
For fans of John Prine or Todd Snider, 32-year-old Texan Hayes Carll is a familiar type—a mush-mouthed drawler who's smarter about the beat than his shambling ways would make you think and funnier than shit when he wants to be, which is often. On his first major-label album, Carll rocks as needed across a rowdy life-scape he describes pungently ("Pills in the tip jar, blood on the strings") and sometimes ruefully ("I spend my life on this broken crutch/And you believe I can fly"). From the fantasy girl who "likes to lay naked and be gazed upon" to the jilted redneck who suspects his girl's new boyfriend, Jesus, by name, is a commie or a Jew, this is familiar territory, sonically and socially. But Hayes Carll lives there—and makes the most of it.

Download: "Drunken Poet's Dream," "She Left Me For Jesus," "Willing to Love Again"
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