Marshall Tucker start their second album mythically reinventing themselves like Americans always have — hitching up their stagecoach and heading west in search of “A New Life.” Ethereal southern space-rock boosted by woodwinds verging on prog and guitars heavying up toward metal, the opening jam lasts nearly seven minutes. Toy Caldwell tells us he shot a man, and now he's so homesick he could die.

Then comes “Southern Woman,” which is even longer, moseying sleepily along for its first three minutes until the brass kicks in, vamping toward bebop over a boogie-woogie beat. A New Life, in general, sounds more explicitly jazzy than the debut — “Too Stubborn” is basically a Western Swing ballad; in the live version of the smoothly picked “Another Cruel Love” added to this slightly expanded reissue, horns repeatedly trill what sounds like the Woody Woodpecker theme.

Caldwell's singing feels somewhat dryer and more macho than on the first album as well — not always an improvement. And while stretched-out song lengths give the music even more room to breathe, the tempos slow some, and cowpokes out in the sun too long are liable to get aimless. So hit country-rock move “24 Hours at A Time,” which marries… read more »