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Steve Earle & The Dukes: Terraplane

Andrew Mueller, Uncut, March 2015

STEVE EARLE has earned the indulgences and deferences of statesmanhood: the discography he has assembled these last thirty years is marvellous and important. Not for the first time, however, Earle has released an album which prompts the wish that he'd stop being quite so statesmanlike. Terraplane — the title alludes to Robert Johnson's 'Terraplane Blues' — is Earle's blues album, the sort of thing artists of a certain age and gravitas tend to release when they feel they're entitled to, akin to a distinguished bishop having a go at saying mass in Aramaic, as if to demonstrate that he could totally have mixed it with his legendary forebears.

Total word count of piece: 325

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