Ryan Adams isn't the first alt-country singer to embrace the dark, doomed melodrama of drunken southern troubadours like Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt. But with the wrenchingly beautiful Jacksonville City Nights, he becomes one of the few who can truly channel their majesty and misery without sounding like a faker.

The second of a proposed trilogy of albums this year with his new band The Cardinals, JCN continues his long-awaited return to rootsy form that began with May's double-disc country set Cold Roses. But where that set reverberated with folksy, ragged echoes of Neil Young, The Dead and The Band, this 46-minute gem sparkles and resonates with the cosmic country-rock of the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Now sporting long hair, glasses and a beard (at least in the CD booklet), Adams warbles and wails and yodels and yelps about guns and booze and sin and cigarettes and trains and dead babies and crippled romance.

Meanwhile, his magnificent Cardinals (who deservedly share songwriting credit on these 14 songs) paint magnificently doleful and tasteful backdrops out of weeping Sneaky Pete steel guitars, tinkly Floyd Cramer pianos, supple honky-tonky rhythms and piercing guitar licks.

What results is not only one of Adams' rootsiest and strongest albums in years, but also one of his most consistent and unforgettable. After Cold Roses, we wondered whether anybody needed three albums in one year from Adams.

Now we're beginning to think that three might not be enough.

Track Listing:

1. A KISS BEFORE I GO
2. THE END
3. HARD WAY TO FALL
4. DEAR JOHN
5. THE HARDEST PART
6. GAMES
7. SILVER BULLETS
8. PEACEFUL VALLEY
9. SEPTEMBER
10. MY HEART IS BROKEN
11. TRAINS
12. PA
13. WITHERING HEIGHTS
14. DON'T FAIL ME NOW