This is getting weird. I can't stop listening to Steve Earle records. We're talking three or four a day. Obsessive, fanboy listening in my throes of middle age. These records all have duets on them, plaintive tales of love gone sour, and Sheryl Crow twangs on one of them. In one song, the background vocals spell out F U C K in Ramones chantstyle and then Earle comes in with "living in the motherfucking USA.' It's beyond cheeseball. One song is called CCKMP (Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain). I am Clintonesque in response. He does a Caribbean ditty called "Condi Condi" in which he professes his undying lust for our Secretary of State. He tries to crawl inside the mind of John Walker Lindh.

Am I being sucked into the no-turning-back land of heartland schmaltz, desperate to feel anything from music again, even if it's telegraphed and delivered in a West Texas drawl by a self-professed "hardcore troubadour"? Or is this music, well, just very, very good, affecting even?

I don't know. I ain't no critic, just another asshole with a mouth. But it's fun to feel like a 14 year old kid again, revelling in the catalogue of your favorite band. See, schmaltz begets schmaltz, and maybe that's better than detached and difficult after all, at least for today.