John Mellencamp's 22nd album is one he might have imagined as a youngster in Indiana, a cocky rebel on the surface, worried and fearful on the inside, music his secret sanctuary. You might hear the irresistible pop single "My Sweet Love" everywhere this summer; you also might have heard this thumping slice of Everly Brothers innocence one summer half a century ago. More typical is "A Ride Back Home," which could have been the gospel song at the root of the Drifters '"Save the Last Dance for Me," fatigue transmuted into romance.

LDLandF is full of such plain-spoken folk blues songs of bone-aching weariness, invitingly framed by producer T Bone Burnett. About half these songs (the sad and beautiful "Longest Days"; the despairing but powerful "Young Without Lovers"; the exhausted but defiant "Don't Need This Body") have little or no drumming, but many have Burnett's atmospheric guitars, resonant notes pickpocketed from some ghost rider in the sky. Harmonies from Karen Fairchild of country act Little Big Town add a touch of brightness, a lilac in a dusty field. With the exception of "Jena," about racial tensions in a small Louisiana town, Mellencamp avoids topicality. Personal, spiritual struggles fuel the songs… read more »