It does, however, sport some startlingly good melodies, and compensates for its occasional ponderousness with an unimpeachable (ahem) first act. The record was produced by Rick Rubin, who was recently seen ruining Neil Diamond songs, and he manages to keep things crisp and crystalline. Long Way is never the great album it wants to be, but it's often very good, especially the steely and soaring title track and the stirring "Easy Silence." And while there may be nothing as immediately winning as, say, "Sin Wagon" or "Long Time Gone" (or even "Wide Open Spaces"), there is the riled-up "Lubbock or Leave It," a stinging kiss-off to Maines' hometown. As the band chugs behind her, Maines snarls, "Raise me, praise me, couldn't save me/ Couldn't keep me on my knees," a sentiment sure to play well with her onetime constituency.

Daniel Smith knows a little something about troubling the Bible Belt. The first four albums he recorded with his siblings as the Danielson Famile were distributed by the Christian label Tooth & Nail, an outfit better suited to shopping pious He-mo to the youth group set. Smith belonged in the mainstream anyhow, and Ships, the newest and best Danielson record, is bright and ebullient, a joy from start to finish. It's all gold, from the skronk and stomp of "Did I Step on Your Trumpet" to the crazed calliope of "Two Sitting Ducks." Smith's ecstatic shriek has never sounded better, and the songs are punctuated by giddy bursts of brass and backing harmonies hijacked from some kind of Venutian Motown. There are apparently people who dislike this band, but I strongly suspect that they are lying. And we all know where liars go. That's right: into politics.

Go to www.jedwardkeyes.com and you shall be saved.