Rainy Day Music

It took these Minnesota alt-country heroes a few years to recover afteco-founder Mark Olson left in the mid-Nineties. But remaining leader Gary Louris was back on his game on 2003’s Rainy Day Music (part of a reissue series with 1997’s dour Sound of Lies and 2000’s poppy Smile). The Jayhawks returned to their early, easeful prettiness, imagining a better yesterday where CSNY got along and Gram Parsons lived to spend the Seventies filling America’s station wagons with AM gold. They didn’t record another album until 2011, making this a heartening end to an odd chapter in a fine band’s history.