Pilgrim
Marty Stuart has always been a terrific singer and picker (as well as a smart, ardent country music historian and collector), but only rarely has he written songs worthy of his other talents. However, onThe Pilgrim, a concept album that tells a true story from Stuart's Mississippi hometown, he has finally found a theme to inspire a whole collection of substantial songs. The title character falls in love with a woman at work, discovers too late she's married, watches her husband kill himself, flees the town for years of drunken wandering, and finally finds redemption in religion and marriage. Here are the great themes of hillbilly music--infidelity, violence, rambling, alcoholism, church and family--wrapped up in an ongoing narrative. It's not surprising that Stuart can get satisfying results from this material when he reaches back to older musical styles and such guest performers asRalph Stanley,George Jones,Johnny Cash, andEarl Scruggs. More impressive is the way he makes the same themes work with the cranked-up, drum-driven country-rock of modern Nashville, which seems to have forgotten how gripping the dark side of human drama can be.--Geoffrey Himes