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Lucinda Williams, 50 this year, would be his female counterpart.

Having heard the best moments of, say, Will Oldham and Cat Power (for all their melodrama and actorly distance), I am loathe to describe the EarleWilliams catalog as haunting or intimate.

Though some of their work is stunning (2-3 songs per album), one has to adjust to the borderline overproduction and to the straightjacket of trad-songcraft.

Im willing to bet you an illiterate folk artists lucky paintstick that some of the EarleWilliams praise comes by default, because they use elements of country in ways that are exponentially more interesting than their competition (the committee-written popaganda leaking from the bowels of whatever lunkhead cowboy or smiley slutloaf got corralled into sing-slinging it), the same way the dithering, blah Democrats can seem noble next to Ashcrofts Army.

I immediately thought of an acquaintance who has lectured me on the Bible, but who asked, when the U.S.

Afghanistan, Is Israel Islam) Earles song is an agenda-less character study of a confused everyteen with a martyr complex on a search for meaning beyond MTV and the soda pop ads.

Where Jacksons gesture required only Nashville greed-sap gumption, Earles song took cojones, especially if you remember the climate into which the song was released, a phase of kneejerk No Muslims Allowed nationalism that some of us in 2003 look back on laughingly, like unfortunate bangs captured in a yearbook photo or a Stevie B.

For all the bluster over John Walkers Blues, the song merely aims to humanize an enemyunpopular perspective, down to its chant fade-out.

So Earle risked bristling the reactionary segment of his audience, an audience he has fostered over the course of a slew of albums on which he has been a progressive, but Nascar-twangy version of the Midwests Mellencamp, the Northeasts Springsteen, or the Souths-but-he-doesnt-flaunt-it Tom Petty.

His audience expanded particularly after The Mountain, his all-bluegrass album (only hinted at by the sinister banjo of this records song for the wrongly-convicted West Memphis 3, The Truth).

Webboard damnations of Jerusalem arent hard to find, and even Amazon customer reviews contain someone spooked by Satanic and demonic vocal effects (Ashes to Ashes is tuff-Earle, sounding campier than Vincent Price) and someone abandoning Earle due to the liberal agenda fest of his social commentary.

That means four of the songs are standard singersongwriter fare, catchy love-ditties (such as the duet with Emmylou Harris, I Remember You) or fuzzy mythmaking (such as Shadowland).

The closer, and title track is an ambitiously optimistic but ultimately frustrating song that tries to apply the aint-we-all-gods-chilluns syncretism of John Walkers Blues to the Middle East.

The song also borrows I may be a dreamer logic from John Lennons blues, Imagine.

But Imagine was an atheist utopian fantasy, whereas Earles Jerusalem pines for a peace that will come from the children of Abraham on the ground where Jesus stood.

Though Earle admits he sounds like a fool and sings of looking into his heart instead of subscribing to the defeatist attitude of the man on TV, the song is dang hard to take seriously because, even when you strip away the situations socioeconomic muck and the occupation debate, you get, fundamentally: groups of racists chosen specially by their respective gods, murdering each other over the gods specially chosen dirt.

Thats not just because his narratives are abubble with big ideas, or because I assume you know his gruff-to-nasal voice, but because, aside from the occasional Eastern touch, or smoking blues-harp solo, or Gary Numan-esque keyboard trill, the albums music is what youd expect: Three minutes of radio-ready guitar-and-drum arrangements.

Of the tone experiments, one really works (the Doug Sahm-ish zydecali-texmex immigrants plea Whats a Simple Man to Do) and one fails horribly (the female call-and-responders of Conspiracy Theory).

Though Earle comes off as more a son of Dylan than Jakob, Bob at 60 writes much fresher songs, songs that one doesnt have to be weathered to enjoy.

Steve Earle Jerusalem Torrent