NORMALLY you can't shut him up, but Steve Earle holds back for nine downbeat political songs.

Hillbilly beard and belly gone, work-shirt sleeves rolled up, he is an "urgent American" as he called himself on 2002's Jerusalem.

The title of the Texan protest singer's second post 9/11 album says it all, The Revolution Starts Now, and there's not a minute to wait for the self-styled "borderline Marxist" to play the album in its sore-toothed entirety.

Revolution is the cord running through 30 songs of country rant'n'roll: from Earle's entry to Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised to the set-closing double whammy of The Dukes re-charging The Beatles' Revolution and reprising The Revolution Starts Now. When Earle does talk, it is with dyspeptic humour and grave concern, apologising to each and every one of us for the US election result, lambasting Bush over Iraq, warning of the erosion of trade unions and calling for unspecified "open revolt".

He gives his guitars a thrashing in Neil Young electric and acoustic styles and leads his "Leeds revolutionaries" through the chorus of signature tune Christmas In Washington. Surprising covers of the Stones' Sweet Virginia and The Youngbloods' Get Together leaven the mood, but Earle will be back on his Bush-whacking case by sunrise.

Charles Hutchinson

Updated: 11:15 Friday, November 19, 2004