by Andrew Leahey

Loneliness runs rampant in Texas, where arid flatlands and empty highways converge to influence some of country's best songwriting. Newcomer Ryan Bingham is cut from the same dusty denim cloth as Texan troubadours Billy Joe Shaver and Willie Nelson, having crisscrossed the Lonestar State for years in search of employment, housing, or something else to inspire his road-weary songwriting. He makes his major-label debut with Mescalito, a bilingual collection of melancholic Americana that often delves into roadhouse country-rock. To those familiar with the genre, Bingham's lyrics are somewhat predictable accounts of hard times, rivers' edges, and fieldwork, all sung in a wizened rasp whose sandpapered texture is impressive coming from a 25-year-old songwriter. Years of sleeping outside rodeo arenas in a truck bed have done a number on Bingham's throat, lending him a sense of rustic authenticity that would otherwise be absent. He may be young, but that cracked voice is testament to Bingham's experiences since leaving his parents' home during childhood. It's the voice of roadside bars and last calls, of bull-riding gigs and border town trailer parks. "I've been working in the goddamn sun for just one dollar a day," he croaks, and clichés be damned, you cannot help but believe him. When he's singing about marijuana plants or casually slipping into Spanish during a lonesome Mexican ballad, Bingham truly distinguishes himself from his country contemporaries, playing the rugged outlaw to Nashville's smooth Rascal Flatts. Where he falters is the album's homogeneity, as too many tracks adopt a midtempo pace whose haunting effect wears thin. One can't help but wish for more country-rock grit, but Mescalito nevertheless bodes well for this upstart's future work.