Paul Burch and WPA Ballclub

Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub’s kind of country music is best fitted for people who will probably never get a chance to hear the group’s third record, Blue Notes. It is country so old-school that anyone weaned on what passes for country today probably won’t care for its earnestness and honesty. And it is beautiful. Other acts play country this way as well, but Burch and company avoid veering toward novelty or making concessions to any event that might have passed since Elvis broke.

With his confident, confiding voice, Burch needs only a few words to evoke clear scenes and moods. On “Isolda,” he sings You don’t dance to the music in the room/the smell of ginger, your perfume, his delivery adding chapters to her tale, before finally concluding I don’t love ya/but I want you so bad. Blue Notes is a testament to how emotionally affecting traditional country music can be if an artist ditches the irony of making it in the present. As such, this disc should become traditional itself.