Scene: a down-on-its-heels third-run movie theater. It's the late show, and Justin Townes Earle, son of alt-country icon Steve, is taking attendance.There's a couple that's been 'going at it all night long,' a bookie placing bets on his phone and watchful Justin, who says he's there because he's got no place else to go. The song, the title track that opens his second album, has the same problem—it's a vignette stuck on hold, a scene desperate for action. Earle spends much of Midnight taking perfunctory stabs at all kinds of Americana—campy honky-tonk, laconic lost-love laments, whiplash-inducing blues, a Replacements cover. But when he sings "Mama's Eyes," a rumination on family resemblance, he stops playing the role of blustery renegade and becomes something else—a sensitive, even vulnerable, soul.

Download "Mama's Eyes," "Halfway To Jackson"