Notable CDs

“Lovin’ Lately,” featuring Tim McGraw, will remind anyone who still needs reminding that, at its best, self-consciously contemporary 21st-century country can yield songs that would’ve improved any Eagles album (the mega-platinum Their Greatest Hits included). The other 10 songs demonstrate the pitfalls of trusting overmuch in a formula. It’s not that they’re not occasionally thoughtful. (See “Thank God for Pain.”) It’s that predictable unthoughtfulness predominates, bringing out the by-numbers nature of vocal harmonies and country-rock instrumentation that already sound rote enough to begin with.

Lucky

Lucky is not a typical tribute album in that the subject is Merle Haggard, a man not necessarily known for being in touch with his feminine side, and the singer is a woman—and that the subjects (drinking, making it through December, chasing each other around the room) survive the woman’s touch. Lucky is typical in that Haggard’s originals are still what jukebox patrons will select nine times out of 10. Lucky is not typical in that it will make that 10th time seem well worth the wait.

Do You Know Me? A Tribute to George Jones

Louisiana Republicans disappointed by Kershaw’s ballot-box failures can console themselves by pondering the likelihood that if he’d become a politician, he wouldn’t have had time to record this uncannily faithful tribute to the Greatest Country Singer of All Time. That Kershaw always sounded at least a little like Jones was what made even his slickest albums tolerable. That Kershaw sounds a lot like Jones now that he’s singing only Jones’ (or Jones-centric) material is what makes one hope for a second (and maybe a third) installment.

747

Just when it seemed that nobody would ever mistake Lady Antebellum for the country-pop Fleetwood Mac again, the trio kicks off with the Mac-ish “Long Stretch of Love,” replete with a Hillary Scott shout-out to “The Chain.” Then there’s the song about teetering on the edge of 17 (if solo Stevie Nicks shout-outs count). True, it’s hard to imagine Fleetwood Mac’s vocalists claiming to “love [their] maker” as Scott does in “Down South.” But the remaining melodies might remind them of their B-sides.

Spotlight

That at 81 and 75 respectively Willie Nelson and Billy Joe Shaver are still writing and recording songs worthy of their ruggedly individual orneriness should encourage anyone who’d rather laugh than cry in the face of impending mortality. Among the nine that Nelson wrote for the 14-song Band of Brothers (Legacy), only “Wives and Girlfriends” and “Used to Her” abound in punch lines. But the covers “Crazy Like Me” and “The Songwriters” glint with wit and/or sardonicism. Shaver, meanwhile, wrote all 10 songs on Long in the Tooth (Lightning Rod), the title and the title track of which join “Last Call for Alcohol” in extracting comic blood from grave stones.

Two Shaver compositions appear on both albums: “Hard to Be an Outlaw” and “The Git Go.” The former uses self-pity as a feint while landing ruggedly individual body blows. The latter’s feint is an Ecclesiastes-worthy resignation, its knockout punch an entire stanza that ponders Christ crucified. —A.O.