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Audio Clip: "City of Immigrants" Click to play Steve Earle is a hard act to follow; just ask Steve Earle. It's been a decade since I Feel Alright and El Corazon, two towering achievements of sonic diversity. Those albums were seemingly random mismashes of blues, rock and country, each disc composed of a dozen tunes going in a dozen different directions, and every song was amazingly good. The guy aced everything he attempted. That's not the case in 2007. He's still a superior songwriter, willing to attempt just about anything, and none of Washington Square Serenade's tracks could be judged failures. But there aren't any classics here, and far too little of the Earle swagger. The album starts well with "Tennessee Blues," a not-quite bitter farewell to "Guitar Town" (the title of his first hit and album, from 1986) and a hello to New York City. "Down Here Below" is a kind of poetry slam about downtown Manhattan delivered over strummed guitar and spelled periodically by a pleasant chorus; weird, but eventually charming. "Satellite Radio" doesn't impress at first, maybe because the idea of a guy who hosts a satellite radio show (as Earle does) singing about hosting a satellite radio show seems less than imaginative. But the song's chorus and relentless return to the phrase "satellite radio" do lodge in the ear; if ever you find yourself absent-mindedly humming a tune from this album, it'll be this one. The pleasant "City of Immigrants," on which Earle is assisted by Brazilian outfit Forro in the Dark, is a refutation of today's xenophobia, but as with many songs about Big Ideas, it fails to connect on an emotional level. But starting with "Sparkle and Shine," Earle returns to more familiar territory, with disappointing results. His love songs are too soft by Earle standards, and his hopeless druggie/prison blues numbers continue to spiral downward. "Oxycontin Blues" is powerful, but that doesn't mean you want to listen to it too often. And besides, "CCKMP (Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain)" was a pretty authoritative statement back in 1996, so why go anywhere near that territory again? To damn with faint praise, this is not the worst album Earle has released since he kicked heroin. And to praise with faint damnation, Earle's output since kicking heroin has been so good, even lesser efforts like this one have something to offer.

-- Josh Robertson