*** Robbie Fulks

SOUTH MOUTH

(Bloodshot)

On last year's Country Love Songs (Bloodshot), Robbie Fulks offered up a honky-tonking collection of tunes that really weren't country love songs so much as songs about loving country -- the classic country of George Jones, Hank Williams, and especially Buck Owens, whose name got top billing in Fulks's clever mini-anthem "The Buck Starts Here." South Mouth finds Fulks aligning his classic strum-and-twang songwriting with the retro C&W of BR-549 both in style and in spirit, particularly in the tune "Fuck This Town," a witty pedal steel-driven ditty that takes aim at Nashville's staid music business culture. It says a lot about Nashville that someone as good as Fulks is putting out albums on a Chicago-based independent label, but, hell, even Buck Owens would probably have trouble getting a deal if he were starting out these days.

-- Matt Ashare