Having watched him throw away the prime years of his career on smack and prison, Steve Earle fans were reassured by the singer´s 1995 comeback, Train A Comin´, where he reclaimed the past in exquisite acoustic arrangements. They were further encouraged by the 1996 followup, I Feel Alright, which staked out the present with rock & roll defiance. Their patient faith was rewarded with El Corazon, an album that no longer looks back at those lost years but looks forward to the rest of Earle´s career. Combining the sheer beauty of Train A Comin´ with the bristling energy of I Feel Alright, El Corazon plows new ground with Earle´s most explicitly political song yet, his furthest leap into another character´s voice, a hard-core bluegrass number with the Del McCoury Band, and a hard-core grunge rocker with the Supersuckers. Earle turns the Fairfield Four into the Jordanaires behind his Elvis vocal on "Telephone Road," and he imitates Townes Van Zand