Dwight Yoakam: Population: Me

In recent months, Dwight Yoakam effectively wrapped up what was left of his career as a mainstream country singer: After a long and fruitful stint on a major label, which culminated in a four-disc retrospective box set late last year, he has finally and formally joined the land of the independents. Long ago relegated to country's fringes after completing a string of great late-'80s hits, Yoakam need no longer worry about attempting to please a fickle and notoriously conformist Nashville establishment. But his new Population: Me eschews any bold stylistic left turns, sticking to a streamlined form of country traditionalism that's somehow seen as radical in Nashville's otherwise strenuously old-fashioned worldview. Breezing by in a filler-free 32 minutes, the album dispenses roiling up-tempo rockers ("No Such Thing") and sad weepers ("Fair To Midland") with equal skill, even recruiting Willie Nelson for a duet on the lovely "If Teardrops Were Diamonds." Population: Me could use a few more drop-dead knockouts like "An Exception To The Rule," which smoothly mixes country and slick pop-rock in a perfect 2 minutes and 19 seconds, but the similarly brisk Burt Bacharach/Hal David cover "Trains And Boats And Planes" comes close enough to matching its peaks. Population: Me's straightforward charms say a lot about Yoakam's place on the country-music landscape: The more he strips away the artifice, the further he moves beyond a genre that's come to embrace little else.