Consumer Guide Album

Tommy Womack: Live a Little [Schoolkids, 2025]
This Kentucky-born Nashvillian has been one of the most reliable songwriters hence singer-songwriters in his cohort for two decades, but never quite as consistently as on this, his ninth album. From his praise of "Speed, Weed and Alcohol" to the bike-riding "Horny Mormon" to the "Funeral Girl" who ferries him to the proceedings in a Mercedes where the leather seats soften his grief, every one of the 11 tracks is pretty much a direct hit, although I admit my attention sharpened with the fifth, which describes and imagines a burg called "Hoboken" I never dreamed was such a dangerous town: "the most populous place in the United States," he warns. But the winner does without laugh lines: "I Guess We're At That Age," which tries to convince God that nobody should die as young as 58. A