Then we arrive at "God Bless America," over the sledge hammer riff McMurtry intones a visceral dissection of corporate greed, and how it fires the rapacious foreign policy of the land of the free, fingering the utter futility in the strategy of the empire that will eat itself: "Take us to the land of milk and honey, sing and dance all night long, what you gonna do with all that money, what you gonna do when the moneys all gone?"

The screw is tightened with "Cheney's Toy," which sees the war as embodying this quote "When old men barter young men for pride and profit, the resulting transaction is called war" while guitars brood and growl as McMurtry's sardonic deadpan delivery tells it like it is.

"Freeway View" brings the tumbling virtuosity of Ian Mclagans piano to the fore front, a roadhouse rocker that lightens thing up before the three key songs that lie at the heart of this record take us back to the isolated, the dislocated, the injured and the excluded that inhabit these songs as emblems of a country that's hung itself at half- mast waiting for a wind of change.

The mournful trumpet and skittering drums set the tone of the "Hurricane Party," the protagonist symbolic of the abandonment that is inescapable when "There is no one to talk to when the lines go down" the resignation summed up by a life where "the first cigarette is as good as it gets".

"Ruby and Carlos" sees McMurtry at his lyrical peak, delivering storytelling that mixes a cinematic narrative and temporal dimensions worthy of "Blood on the Tracks" era Dylan with snatches of conversation "wasn't he barely half her age, that just how they do it these days" against a backdrop of Gulf War Syndrome, equine swamp fever, and economic desperation which result in a tortured, diseased relationship. Carlos has "Lately been staying high, ill all winter and he don't know why'. Accompanied by a groaning cello and an acoustic guitar that could have come of a Nick Drake album till the chorus arrives and breaks your heart: "Holding back the flood just don't do no good, you can't unclench your teeth to howl the way you should, So you curl your lips around the taste of tears and the hollow sound, that no one owns but you". Has there ever been a better exposition of anguish on a rock n roll record?

If "Ruby and Carlos" show McMurtry's story telling abilities, then Fireline Road highlight his ability to write from a woman's point of view, not for the first time, as "Rachael's Song" speaks for the lone parent trying to cope with a troublesome son and the "Lights of Cheyenne" describes the life of an abused wife. I'm not sure how many hairy-assed Texan's choose this view point when songwriting, but I am sure none do it with the skill and conviction of McMurtry, Alice Walker the narrator of "Fireline Row" tells of incest, crank and abject misery in a cinder block cell. It's the empathy McMurtry brings to this misery that reinforces its impact " They've taken her babies and they won't give em back, I know she loves them and god knows she's tried, but when you're that far down you're gonna get high, its like eating or breathing to the rest of us, she can't even feel bad without the stuff"