If not for the sense of haunted desolation in many of his songs, James Low might be pegged as the eternal optimist. For no matter how lowdown, heartbroke, and alone his protagonists find themselves, they often seem acutely aware that something better must lie ahead: a sunny day; a fruitful harvest; some money in the pocket; a true, untainted love; or perhaps just the notion of someday finding peace of mind _ a place free from chronic psychic pain. Sure, he's going to drag the listener through the depths of his characters despair and by extension, their souls. But the reward is in trying to figure out not just how they got caught there, but what keeps them going, moving if ever so deliberately -,ever toward the light.

Low has never sounded more revealing and in character than on his latest recording, Live at Mississippi Studios. On this stripped-down set of classic tales from life's fringes, Low further obliterates whatever line may have separated the alcohol-drenched heartache of Hank Williams postwar Ame