Artist: Steve Earle
Album: I Feel Alright (1996)
Label: Warner Bros.\ WEA
iH Rating: 8.2 out of 10
RIYL: redemption stories, midwest roots rock, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Del McCoury

For Steve Earle to be feeling alright circa 1996 is a good sign for the rest of us. A life-threatening drug addiction exiled him from music for much of the first half of the nineties. His career, and probably his life, were only saved by a stint in prison that forced him to kick the drug habit and get re-focused on his music. His comeback album Train a Comin was warmly received by fans and critics alike. He followed it up with I Feel Alright less than 18 months later.

You don't have to be familiar with Earle to enjoy him, its easy to tell right away that he is a great songwriter. The title track is a Mellencamp-esque (yeah, I said it, you got a problem with Mellencamp-esque?) foot stomper, that kicks off the album on an upbeat note just as an album called I Feel Alright without tongue in cheek should start. To feel the joy in the man's gravelly voice is to know what it means to survive.

"Hard Core Troubador" is love song for stubborn lovers, the kind that can't keep from screwing it up time and time again and can't resist taking each other back time and time again. It's hard-assed and smart-alecky and it takes no prisoners, just speaks truth. It's about this time that you realize Earle is done with bullshit and sentiment. He's speakign truth no matter how ugly, and most true are the moments when he reflects on his own ugly history. He doesn't hold anything back; apologetic but not regretful he confesses his sins. "Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You" shows him at his most sorrowful, confessing that a hard price was paid before he realized that his abuses of others have all come back around to him in the end. I believe it, too. He's not asking for anything, he's merely put it all out on the table, perhaps in hopes that it might ease his conscience a little.

This record has a lot of ups and downs, down-and-outs and high-as-the-skys, but it doesn't lack weak spots. At least one track, "The Unrepentant," falls into the truck commercial music category, too trite to feel authentic. But the strong points are really strong. "The Unrepentant" is followed up by "CCKMP" which stands for "Cocaine cannot Kill My Pain" which is a mantra repeated over and over through the song as it winds along a psychedelic horror story path ala "White Light\White Heat." It is the psychological lowpoint that puts the perspective on the exuberant high points.

So many albums, collaborations, and other projects later, Steve Earle is staying clean and continuing to make good music. Its a great story about going to hell and back and coming out so much stronger because of it. Appropriately the album ends with "You're Still Standing There," a delightful duet with Lucinda WIlliams and one of the best tracks on the album. At least, it is the one that works the best outside the context of the album. It is an ode to the lover that sticks through the tough times and comes out on the other side with just as much love in their heart, a thank you note of sorts to all of those people that still believed in Earle even at his lowest. The man has been married seven times, divorced six. He's seen more than his share of fair-weather friends, I'm sure. He surely can't be easy to get along with, especially during the period leading up to I Feel Alright, so its not hard to imagine that the ones who did stick around mean a great deal to him. It's just as easy to believe the sincerity of his voice on tracks like "You're Still Standing There" that so openly bare his insecurities and shortcomings.