Ryan Bingham

Like his label-mate, Hayes Carll, Ryan Bingham is one of the few young guns to come out of the Texas scene in recent years to garner critical cred on par with his Lone Star draw. Winning a following with the frat crowd is one thing; but Bingham’s ragged-beyond-its-years voice and equally world-weary words earned him raves from elder statesmen of Texas cool Joe Ely and Terry Allen long before his 2007 major-label debut, Mescalito. Fittingly, Roadhouse Sun swaggers a lot more than its predecessor; who wouldn’t swagger with accolades like that? Sometimes, all that bluster trips Bingham up; “Endless Ways” is more bark than bite, and “Day is Done” comes saddled with the kind of tired “I was born a bad man’s son” schtick best left to Shooter Jennings. But more often than not, Bingham does his reputation proud. Song titles like “Tell My Mother I Miss Her So,” “Country Roads” and “Snake Eyes” may suggest a veritable minefield of lyric and musical clichés, but Bingham, his band and producer Marc Ford artfully dodge them all. The tour de force is “Dylan’s Hard Rain,” which rides a ringing guitar straight out of Byrdsville and finds Bingham deftly wrapping his own razor-sharp lines of social commentary around an indelibly catchy melody. Nothing else on Roadhouse Sun is quite that perfect, but few next-big-things ever even get quite that close.