Hayes Carll (performance & record signing)

Following last year’s rollicking collaboration with the Band of Heathens, Hayes Carll’s new ninth LP rolls back with a more reflective tone. Not that We’re Only Human isn’t cut with Carll’s classic winking wit – take the rhyming of “Deloris” and “divorce” on “Progress of Man (Bitcoin & Cattle),” for instance – but the balladeer offers up contemplative philosophical musings and aphorisms on our modern condition with a ruminating and roughened vocal that hearkens Lyle Lovett’s playful wisdom. The album runs in search of what unites us as much as the absurdities that we’re all plodding through. – Doug Freeman