For better or worse, they don't make records like Murder of Crows anymore. Joe Henry's second album (the first was 1986's woefully overlooked Talk of Heaven) revels in what were once staples of album-oriented FM radio: twangy lead and slide guitars, orchestrated ballads and stately, woodsy arrangements reminiscent of old Band, Traffic and Procol Harum records. Henry's songs make references to "shipwrecks and election days/Piano rolls, midways and river towns," and his husky drawl brings to mind a wheat-field mix of Randy Newman and Tupelo Honey-era Van Morrison. Maybe Coyote/A&M should skip CD release and go directly to eight-track tape.

Luckily, Henry and producer-drummer Anton Fier make this revisionism work to their advantage. Henry writes sullen ballads that constantly refer to feeling uprooted – not surprising for a Midwesterner currently based in Brooklyn. Fier, meanwhile, fills in the gaps with a backup band that features such authentic Seventies talismans as former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor (who adds glistening leads throughout) and former Allman Brothers Band keyboardist Chuck Leavell. Their playing brings a sparkle to the album's best songs – the Great Divide sweep of "Step Across the Mountain," the thoroughbred trot of "Here and Gone" and "Six Feet into the Country," the elegiac ballad "Hidden Man" (with tasteful strings arranged by Van Dyke Parks) and the jauntier "She Is Sleeping," a tale of nighttime disquiet that benefits from the brightest Leavell piano sound since "Jessica."

Murder of Crows makes a stronger impression than the drably produced Talk of Heaven, although it loses some of its straight-backed character when it isn't brazenly conjuring up classic-rock styles: without the Seventies references, tracks like the chamber-folk "Siren" wash away like footprints on a beach. Henry is also fond of pretty but frustratingly vague lyrics, such as "Without failing any promise/Something said is given wing/To rise over the garden wall/Returning only half the dream." Murder of Crows may be a "rock" album in the most old-fangled sense of the word, but it's also a reminder that what were once vices can still be habit-forming. (RS 547)

DAVID BROWNE