Surprisingly good alt.country debut by a man better known for his acting and being the less attractive half of the married couple which also includes the edible Angelina Jolie. With help from producer/guitarist Marty Stuart and a fine band, BBT creates some evocativemoods here from the Byrdsian jangle of the old He Was a Friend of Mine through the country-pop of Walk of Shame and into breathy ballad mode with Holly Lamar on Starlight Lounge.
There's some honkytonk trucker-rock on Smoking in Bed (trainspotters will enjoy the guitar riff reference), Ms Jolie gets her tribute on the attractive ballad Angelina, and Forever is a phone call from the road to a girlfriend while wearing her pink panties and listening to Merle Haggard. It works, but you have to be there.
Most attention will settle on Beauty at the Back Door, a 10-minute spoken-word piece which suggests a sexual encounter between his dad and a girl which BBT observed as a child. True or not, it's an evocative, eerie piece and unsettling listening, and like nothing else on the album. But then these 12 tracks run a pretty wayward and wide course. Part spoken-word (more correctly growled-word), part backwoods charm and part grim southern Gothic, Private Radio is an odd, oddly likeable and slightly sleazy album best sampled in small discriminating doses.
ALSO RAN: Together at the Bluebird Cafe (Shock) captures Steve Earle, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt live in 95 swapping songs in a low-key acoustic setting. Earl is in terrific form, Townes introduces his songs with his typical dry humour and later delivers singular treatments of A Song For and Tecumseh Valley, and Clark offers among others his wonderful short story-song Randall Knife. Recommended.