Jonathan Wilson: Dixie Blur

One could make a case that Jonathan Wilson is a modern day Dino Valenti, and he confirms it by opening the Nashville cat house that is Dixie Blur (BMG) with a swoony cover of Quicksilver Messenger Service’s muy romantico “Just for Love.” Much of the rest of this delightfully twangy country-folk-rocker is equally loverly, from the autobiographical “‘69 Corvette” to a spellbinding lonesome-town reprise of Wilson’s early Muscadine track “Korean Tea.” The aforementioned studio felines include pedal-steel pro Russ Pahl, formidable fiddler Mark O’Connor and Wilco’s Pat Sansone, who also co-produced. Recorded mostly live in the studio, as opposed to Wilson’s usual piecemeal approach, Dixie Blur probably won’t often be compared to Stephen Malkmus’s folkadelic Traditional Techniques but it should be.