TROUBLE IN MIND - HAYES CARLL
On his Lost Highway debut, this Houston-based country-rock crooner covers Tom Waits’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” but judging by the rest of “Trouble in Mind,” it might be too late for Hayes Carll. The fine songwriting here, rich with Texas-music echoes, suggests that this 32-year-old is the owner of a much older soul. Carll tills thematic soil well-known to any country fan–as one title puts it, he’s not really interested in stories that don’t include someone suffering from a “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart.” But throughout “Trouble in Mind” he views the familiar with fresh eyes. In one tune he’s “got a girl out in Henrietta” whose “love is like tornado weather”; in another he catches sight of a “barefoot shrimper with a pistol up his sleeve.”
