It's been a while since a Country album has come along and floored me like this, but I should have expected it from the son of Alt-Country legend Steve Earle and the nephew of Alt-Country songbird Stacey Earle. With his incredibly solid Midnight at the Movies, Justin Townes Earle has made a case for never having to rest on his family name because he's discovered a towering voice of his own.

Midnight at the Movies has elements of all different varieties of Country music, never following a single path. Killer tracks such as "What I Meant to You" have an almost Ragtime-y feel while "Poor Fool" follows the Bakersfield sound of greats such as Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam. Earle's voice sounds a lot like a Ryan Adams type and it comes across most on tracks such as the opening self-titled song. He also has a bit of Paul Westerberg in him, so it comes with no surprise that Earle would tackle a Mandolin lead version of the classic Replacements track "Can't Hardly Wait" to great effect here.

He can even bring greatness to locomotive style Blues numbers as he does on the excellent "Halfway to Jackson." The most powerful track here though has to be the blunt and openly frank track "Mama's Eyes" that goes out of its way to let people know that he and daddy Steve have a contentious relationship, but he's also his father's son because he just doesn't know when to shut up. This and the other eleven tracks here that make up Midnight at the Movies will certainly make for one of not only the best Country albums of the year, but hands down one of the best albums of the year bar none.