Brighter Days

This may be his first record in nearly a decade, but Dwight Yoakam sounds anything but absent on this spirited and sometimes surprising collection of California-informed country. The denim cowboy produced the record himself and co-wrote most of its tracks, throwing in a few eclectic covers—Cake’s “Bound Away,” The Byrds’ “Time Between,” and The Carter Family’s “Keep on the Sunny Side”—for good measure. Highlights on the record include the title track, a dusky and loping wish for better days, and “A Dream That Never Ends,” a lyrically spare but sonically potent rocker with a sneakily soulful melody. Of the covers, Yoakam transforms the 2011 Cake cut the most notably, infusing the original’s DIY jangle with the laid-back sunny vibe that characterizes so much of his catalog. The lone guest on the LP is country superfan Post Malone, who joins Yoakam on the twangy two-stepper “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye (Bang Bang Boom Boom),” which Yoakam wrote specifically for him.

Yoakam returns to an evolving country landscape that just might make space for him