In today's brave new Nashville, artists fall into neat categories: the docile crooners, like Randy Travis and George Strait, who sing pretty and pretty much toe the line; and the hell raisers, like Steve Earle and John Anderson. But, lucky for us, twenty-seven-year-old Clint Black doesn't fall into one of the neat categories. Neither choirboy nor hellion, he writes and sings about battered hearts, broken dreams and tortured emotions with an unflinching directness.

The best thing about Killin' Time is Black never sounds like he's trying too hard. Like Merle Haggard, Black understands striking veins of true emotion is the real deal. On "Nothing's News," Black is consumed by boredom and regret, while in the shuffling number "A Better Man" he sees positive effects in the wake of a failed relationship.

This is a lean, hard country record, where fiddles slide in and out, pedal steel guitars swell up for punctuation and the backbeat is meant for dance floors. But that doesn't make it an album for hillbillies and rednecks only. Anyone who's ever known a dull ache that won't go away will find themselves in this music. (RS 559)

HOLLY GLEASON