Starlite Lounge
South Carolinian David Ball found his musical calling in the rickety wooden dance halls of Texas. There he discovered the pleasures of getting crowds to shuffle their cowboy boots to drawling honky-tonk tales of love gone wrong; he also learned that by cranking up the electric guitar and the snare drum, one can get the younger country dancers who hang out at converted suburban discos to shuffle to the same songs. That recipe made Ball'sThinkin' Problemone of the best albums of 1994, and it's a formula he uses successfully again onStarlite Lounge. The cover silhouettes Ball against the mirror ball from one of those revamped discos, but the vocals inside sound like Ray Price and Lefty Frizzell. Ball and frequent cowriter Tommy Polk collaborate on nearly half the songs here, displaying their knack for bemoaning a dim romantic situation in a lyric and contradicting it in a melody's resilient, upbeat attitude.--Geoffrey Himes