The big problem with greatness is that once you achieve it, you're expected to sustain it forever. Nobody can pull that off -- not even someone as monumentally wonderful as Gillian Welch.

The neo-gothic folksinger's 2001 CD Time (The Revelator) was a stunner that deservedly landed on tons of critics' year-end lists (ours included). But like all classic-album followups, her fourth disc Soul Journey is, sadly, not quite as magnificent. Which is not to say it's bad, or trite, or even a rehash of Time. It is none of these things. But it is different from Time.

The vibe is looser and more casual, songs like One Monkey and No One Knows My Name are simpler and less intensely crafted, and the arrangements of numbers like Look at Miss Ohio and Wrecking Ball -- which find Welch and longtime partner David Rawlings adding instruments like drums, electric bass and keyboards to their traditional recipe of dual acoustic guitars -- help make Soul Journey the most contemporary-sounding album of Welch's career.

Is it great? No. But anybody who can disappoint you with an album this superb can't be counted out just yet.

Track Listing
1. Look At Miss Ohio
2. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
3. Wayside/Back In Time
4. I Had A Real Good Mother And Father
5. One Monkey
6. No One Knows My Name
7. Lowlands
8. One Little Song
9. I Made A Lovers Prayer
10. Wrecking Ball