Album review: Austin Lucas, Stay Reckless (New West)

The delicate neo-bluegrass of Lucas’s debut Somebody Loves You trails the occasional tender tendril across this, his third solo album. But really Stay Reckless is a rock record, built out of the mateship the singer enjoys with the alt.country group Glossary, and thrashed along, as these things often are, by a het-up drummer.

It may be a passing phase. Let’s hope so, because Lucas the writer is a fine, raw-eyed examiner of the fractured heart and a deeply affecting singer. He is one of the quiet joys of current American music – the quieter the better.

Just listen to “Rings” and his intense, drumless snake-coiling with what sounds like several pedal-steels (but is probably only one, festooned with reverb).