Former army airborne soldier Shawn Mullins is a sensitive tough guy. Inside the sleeve of Soul's Core – the Atlanta troubadour's seventh album but his first on a major label – his motorcycle T-shirt proclaims benefiting muscular dystrophy. When he tells us "freedom's just a metaphor," he sounds like a parody of a world-weary beautiful loser. But his music has a hangover mood as unmawkish as Kris Kristofferson's eternal "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" (which Mullins covers), thanks to his vigorously strummed rhythms and a startlingly specific sense of storytelling.

"Lullaby," Mullins' big hit about sad children of the Hollywood jet set, is a seraphic-chorused, electronic talking blues comparable to nothing on radio since David and David's 1986 "Welcome to the Boomtown." In Soul Core's first five tracks, Shawn gets "stoned in San Francisco," calls L.A. "Nashville with a tan," then visits the Gulf of Mexico, Seattle and Oregon – he's quite the ramblin' man, addicted to interstate stops you can backpack to. (I keep waiting for him to write "Beatific in Butte.") But the guy's corn is endearing, and from teens shot in back water-Mississippi Wal-Mart lots to trailer-park moms protecting microwave ovens from Kansas twisters, his character sketches exhibit an eye for detail that any journalist would envy. (RS 801)

CHUCK EDDY