In a year crowded with deluxe boxed sets and algorithm-friendly vinyl drops, a handful of records reminds us what music is for: memory, reckoning, and the truths we can't polish away. Sometimes, that means a lost classic reissued with new warmth; sometimes, it means a quiet old master stepping forward with one more unvarnished confession.

No one does that last part better than James McMurtry. "The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy" is a fresh reckoning from an artist who has spent a lifetime telling hard truths and somehow making them sing. Around him, a wave of reissues -- Furry Lewis' stoic blues, Memphis Slim's effortless elegance, Bill Evans' luminous grief -- fill in the background, reminding us how the past keeps humming under the present if we bother to listen. And at the heart of it all is "Requiem for Mary Turner": a new work that refuses to treat history as background noise. It listens back -- and insists we do, too.

James McMurtry -- "The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy" (New West, 2025)

Some records arrive in the world looking for applause; some arrive out of necessity. "The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy" is the latter -- a late-career reckoning that sounds like what it is: an aging Texas storyteller leaning into mortality with no fuss, polish or illusions.

The title comes from a dying father's fever dream. Larry McMurtry saw visions in his last days: a black dog pacing the room, a boy drifting down a road that never quite curves back home. James stitched those fragments to his own tangle of aging regrets and half-finished letters to America. The result is a record that doesn't beg to be liked. It doesn't raise its voice. But it commands you all the same.

"Laredo (Small Dark Something)" starts with the smell of stale motel air and ends up somewhere between confession and curse. There's no hero to cheer for -- just the junkie's grin and the singer's unblinking eye. In a lesser writer's hands, it'd be a pose. McMurtry makes it a human fact.

Then there's "Pinocchio in Vegas," maybe the most telling song on the record: a wooden boy grows up, lies like a politician, loses whatever soul he had in the noise of slot machines and half-truths. It's funny, then sad, then funny again -- McMurtry's wheelhouse. Nobody writes about men failing so dryly, so accurately.

The deeper cut is "South Texas Lawman," where he shrugs off the cult of youth: I can't stand getting old; it don't fit me. It's an observation, like noting the weather before lighting a cigarette you promised yourself you'd quit. And under that line hums Don Dixon's production -- restrained, roomy, letting every guitar echo just enough to remind you these songs breathe.

One surprise: how intimate this album feels, even with the sharper edges. Sarah Jarosz's voice floats through "Annie," banjo and harmony threading McMurtry's gruffness with a flicker of grace. It's a trick he has pulled off before -- finding the beauty in a song too beaten up to beg for it.

What strikes hardest about "The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy" is........

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