Red Dirt Road  (Audio CD) 
by Brooks & Dunn

Having stumbled in 1999 with the lackluster Tight Rope, Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn picked themselves up and dusted off their Wranglers with 2001's Steers and Stripes, an album that some listeners considered their best. But that was before Red Dirt Road, a collection of coming-of-age songs in which country's most successful duo comes clean about who they are and what forged their turbo-tonk sound. The title song is a spectacular and poignant slice of backwoods Southern milieu that melds the push of the gospel with the pull of desire--which, for a '60s teenager, meant girls, cars, and the beer-laced taste of freedom. Both men know a little bit about those subjects (don't miss Dunn's hidden track, "Holy War," which skewers TV preachers), as well as the thrill of Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones, a sound that permeates at least three songs here, including the randy "You Can't Take the Honky Tonk Out of the Girl." Bluegrass also gets a strong nod on the exquisite "Caroline," as does the Tulsa-bred, Leon Russell-fueled music that personally schooled Dunn in the '70s, particularly on "I Used to Know This Song By Heart," a tour de force of sharp Pentecostal vocals punctuated by the searing guitar work of Kenny Greenburg. Everything about this album moves the duo up a level, even Kix's singing on "When We Were Kings," a true-life remembrance of the Vietnam years. A few songs predictably pad things out, but on the whole Red Dirt Road is both surprisingly affecting and monstrously good. --Alanna Nash