Truth Decay

T-Bone Burnett is best known as the producer of records by Counting Crows, Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, the Wallflowers, Gillian Welch, and his wife, Sam Phillips. He's also released a number of his own albums that attracted a critical following but never caught the popular ear. That could be because Burnett is a rather cerebral moralist who sometimes lets his message overtake his music. That's also why 1980's Truth Decay, which featured a small rock combo playing roots-oriented music, is one of his best albums. Songs like "Boomerang" and "Quicksand" rock with a compositional concision that matches the writing of his best production clients, while "Driving Wheel" has great archival fun recreating the sound of rockabilly. Burnett's not a great singer, but he's a savvy one, and able to do justice to a roadhouse blues tune like "Pretty Girls" and a sweet ballad like "The Power of Love." "I'm Coming Home" concludes the album with a touch of country, a genre that Burnett would explore on one of his other notable albums, 1986's T Bone Burnett. --John Milward