He’s rough, yet tender

Josh Turner

“Your Man” MCA Nashville

* * 1/2

Among male country singers, there tend to be sweet-voiced tenors crooning tender love songs or deep-voiced guys growling their masculinity. The twain meet in Turner, the hunky young South Carolina singer-songwriter. He’s as much a woman’s ideal date as Gary Allan or Kenny Chesney while sounding every bit the man’s man with a woodsy baritone that drops lower than an armadillo on a West Texas highway crossing.

His second album is a confident affair with some impressive guests: one of his key vocal role models, John Anderson, and bluegrass great Ralph Stanley. These pairings, however, reveal less about how far Turner’s come than about how much further he may reach.

Turner’s bluegrass instrumentation with country rock sets up colorful musical settings, but the lyrics -- whether his or songs by other writers -- fall back on overly familiar territory.

The nimble, upbeat numbers work better than some treacly ballads, with the snappy “Baby’s Gone Home to Mama” and the witty “Loretta Lynn’s Lincoln” being the liveliest numbers.

*

-- Randy Lewis