ROBERT EARL KEEN > The Rose Hotel

Updated:

September 30, 2009 7:38 am

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ROBERT EARL KEEN

The Rose Hotel

(LOST HIGHWAY)

[RATING: 3 stars]

There’s been much dissection of economic decisions and consequences, and much brooding and airing of regret these last 18 months or so—which makes this the opportune time for a Robert Earl Keen album, particularly one as stocked with songs about taking near-hits and misses in stride as The Rose Motel. It opens with the title track’s story of a romance that almost was. The country-rock groove is languid and flexible, and the lyric hook offers an unruffled bit of philosophy; the whole thing comes off like a good-natured shrug. Two songs later, the muscular southern boogie “Throwing Rocks” narrates a dramatic reversal of passions with droll, danceable swagger. On a trio of more laden, pedal steel-sweetened tracks, Keen sings—sometimes nasally—about endings (“Goodbye Cleveland”), continuity (“On and On”) and unglamorous way stations (“Village Inn”). Given that he says his gifts lie more in songwriting than interpretation, it’s no surprise that the two covers—of Townes Van Zandt’s “Flyin’ Shoes” and Greg Brown’s “Laughing River” (with Brown, no less)—don’t add much. But Keen’s humor is welcomed leavening here, from the absurdity he finds in the life of a barfly (“10,000 Chinese”) to the way he wryly takes two modern pressure points—reliance on technology and anxiety about the afterlife—down a notch in “Wireless In Heaven.”