Rough as silk

God only knows what Yoakam did different this time around, but Gone (Reprise) is one Hungry-Man Dinner of an album, and it breaks his curse. It's among the best albums of the year, in any category, and for those of us who value understatement as much as fine old-fashioned country-music wordplay, it establishes Yoakam as one of the greatest living country lyricists.

There's both poetry and hokum on Gone, and that must be what makes it swing. Unlike any number of contemporary country artists from Helen Darling to Garth Brooks ("Cowboys and Angels"? For real?), Yoakam has a sense of his place in the universe, which is why he delights in unapologetically goofball roadhouse songs like "Sorry You Asked?" without turning them into pure shtick. "Sorry" is an ear-chewing litany of one poor joe's love problems ("I can't really tell you who's at fault/But there were certain third parties, her sister for one . . . ") that's rooted in country tradition without being strangled by it. And because sentimentality is also part of the country tradition, Yoakam nods to that, too, but he can wash away its excesses with a single line the way a wave flushes out a tidal pool. The melody of "This Much I Know," a sturdy, majestic march wrought into a stunning ballad, suggests nothing so much as the build-up to the suicidal climax of The Wild Bunch, and you can almost hear Yoakam bolstering himself for his own personal showdown in the song's last line. He asks for one basic thing, and one impossible: "Words to speak without missing her/Or just some new way to breathe." It's meat and potatoes side by side with ambrosia.

Yoakam's lyrics -- Leonard Cohen meets Ernest Tubb -- work so well because they're literary without being high-minded. The artfulness of the words on Gone doesn't always hit you until you read them on the lyric sheet -- which is as it should be, since they're intended first and foremost as songs. And yet reading them is something of a trip in itself. They can be conversational and complex, mimicking real speech but winding on like a clause-laden Henry James sentence: "Wasn't it you who said a blinded fool could see the clear plain truth about how deeply cruel it is to live a lie here with each other and mourn a love that won't recover? As I recall, those were the very words I heard you use." Yoakam streams on much longer than any sensible country songwriter would -- he's that crazy, and that's what sets him apart.

But most important, Gone has an amazing sound. If you're looking for seamlessness, it can drive you nuts, since Yoakam and longtime producer and collaborator (and God's gift to country guitarists) Pete Anderson go for a markedly different mood from one number to the next. "Nothing" ends up less a country song than an R&B ballad, complete with a gospel backing chorus, rustling organ lines, and punched-up horn parts. "Heart of Stone" reads like a paean to legendary Nashville producer Owen Bradley, brushed with lush strings that never dissolve into syrup. And "Near You" (one of the loveliest and most idiosyncratic songs on Gone) seems to be based on some sort of Middle Eastern scale -- or is it more like the Everly Brothers? Hard to say.

The magic of Yoakam's voice is that it's not really that great. It's a good voice, but not an amazing one, which means he really has to sing. It's all well and good if a singer can give you velvet, but it ain't worth a damn if he's just painting on it, smearing the words around because he knows they sound good. Because Yoakam doesn't have that luxury, he never gets lazy. His phrasing is expressive without sounding either slapdash or overly rehearsed. And at the bottom of its range, his voice has the texture of roughed-up silk, which is kind of a metaphor for his work in general: he's big on craftsmanship, but he stops short of slickafied polish. He's a smoothie who's still plenty rough around the edges.