Dwight Yoakam: Second Hand Heart

ARTISTS DEPENDENT ON TRADITION as muse and subject gamble on fate. Eventually the marketplace will deal — so they think. Well, Dwight Yoakam has won twice. After a hell of an '80s run, he spent the '90s in Hollywood and released distracted albums before 2003's superb Population Me marked his return. The revelation was 2012's 3 Pears, in which at 56 he sounded no different from the hiccuping punk who shoved his guitar neck in the faces of Earl Thomas Conley and Oak Ridge Boys back in 1985. Second Hand Heart is a whisker less awesome, but in the last month only Earl Sweatshirt's album could match its acerbic brevity. (And Earl's album title is better.)