Asylum, 1999

For quite some time George Jones has blasted commercial country stations for preferring tight butts and slick packaging over proven, if older, talent. Of course he’s right, but then again he hasn’t done anything in quite some time that really stands out. Well, Shania and Garth, move over, ’cause The Possum’s back. In the finest album he’s done in ages, Jones sticks close to what he does best: heartsick ballads and honky-tonkin’. His twisting, snaking voice wrings every emotional drop out of a phrase, while fiddles and steel guitars wail their commiseration. That he’s lived his songs has always given them added poignancy, and there’s perhaps no song on this album more poignant than the opening cut, “Choices,” in which he decries the effect liquor has had on his life. Yet there’s more than heartbreak that gives this album its emotional punch. “Ain’t Love a Lot Like That” and “Sinners and Saints” allow Jones to cut loose on some toe-tapping numbers. The liner material includes pictures (with his mama, as an Army man, with dozens of celebrities) spanning Jones’s remarkable career. Yet Cold Hard Truth doesn’t merely further cement Jones’s place in country music’s past, it gives him a place in its continued growth.