Jerry Dowell

On the back cover of Prelude to Apocalypse, Kansas City's Jerry Dowell looks a bit like Toby Keith, all muscles, facial hair and cowboy hat. So it's only natural to fear the content of tunes titled "Loaded Gun" and "War Goin' On." But Dowell's views on military matters are anything but reactionary, and his approach to songwriting is even more open-minded. On Prelude, his second disc, Dowell veers from honky-tonk to loop-driven percussive funk to sax-driven free jazz to doo-wop balladry, treating each genre with respect. His acoustic instrumental interludes birth jangling rockers that sound like R.E.M. playing roadhouse blues. Musically, the album flows so coherently that Dowell's stylistic switch-ups never seem gimmicky, and his rugged, weather-beaten vocals and literate lyrics (The evil that I see/Is the conflict that I find inside of me) communicate the same appealing personality regardless of their backdrop.