A Little Tip o’ the Hat

Drawing on material that reflects his own fascination with heartbreak and bleak existence, singer-songwriter-actor Dwight Yoakam essays 12 tunes by other artists on his eighth album.

Yoakam and his band play Roy Orbison’s “Claudette” and Jimmy Webb’s Glen Campbell hit “Wichita Lineman” relatively straight (the latter being one of the album’s two weak spots, along with “Baby Don’t Go,” with Yoakam as Sonny and Sheryl Crow as Cher), and his country roots show clearly on several traditionally rendered tracks.

But the album is most interesting when guitarist-producer Pete Anderson, whose offbeat arrangements often have delightfully weird effect, gets inventive, turning the Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting for You” into a swing tune and the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” into a thrashing rockabilly locomotive. These unexpected transformations reflect the depth of the original works, reminding us that good songwriting shows through any interpretation.

Yoakam and Anderson play this idea to mildly comical effect with a spy-movie take on the Beatles’ “Things We Said Today,” but more often use it to enlighten, as when they turn the Clash’s stuttering “Train in Vain” into a smooth two-step, complete with fiddle and banjo, underscoring the age-old connection between punk and country.

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* Excerpts from these albums and other recent releases are available on The Times’ World Wide Web site. Point your browser to: https://www.latimes.com/soundclips