Population Me

You gotta love Dwight Yoakam. As country music has dragged itself into a glittery abyss over the last 20 years, Yoakam has refused to be pulled down with it. Instead, he’s made exactly the records he’s felt like making and damn if he hasn’t sold some of them along the way. Population Me is his first album for his own label, and it’s a good’un. There’s rattling, banjo-tinged, country-rock movers (“Late, Great Golden State”); vibrant, unhinged, rockabilly shakers (“Stayin Up Late [Thinkin’ About It]”); pedal-steel-led Western swing (“No Such Thing”); spooky, two-step, backwoods rambles (“Population Me”); and a loping, twangy duet with Willie Nelson (“If Teardrops Were Diamonds”). And then there’s his voice—a high, lonesome wail that jumps, dives, soars, whinnies and hiccups—bringing out both the gripping melancholy and gallows humor that’s ever-present in his songs. The Nashville machine could never have shoehorned Yoakam’s talent into one of its easy-to-sell packages, but thank fuck he’s never let them get close enough to try.