We love the gritty guitars and fierce attitude of Steve Earle’s definitive brand of country-rock, but there’s been a dash of blues in his sound (and his soul) from the start. Earle fully embraces his inner bluesman on Terraplane, taking an old-school approach on tunes that tap into everything from Big Joe Williams ("You're the Best Lover That I Ever Had") to a fiddle-flecked jugband sound ("Ain't Nobody's Daddy Now"). But ever the iconoclast, Earle embarks on bold detours like the spoken Faustian-bargain tale "The Tennessee Kid.”