Greg Brown

Greg Brown's best album, Slant 6 Mind, begins with tense acoustic guitar and millenarian growls: "She's got a slant 6 mind and a supercharged heart/The little princess is singing about her parts/She says, 'Come hither,' but when I get hither, she is yon/I was looking for what I loved, whatever it was is gone." He's tearing up his Prairie Home Companion roots (though the sly singer still makes occasional appearances); malevolent electric licks seal the deal. The hulking Iowan, raised on William Blake and gospel revivals, has his folk and thumps it, too. You'd have to turn to John Prine or Townes Van Zandt to find a better post-Dylan singer-songwriter; you'd have to head to the Mississippi hill country to find a deeper folk blues.