"I knew going into this record that I wanted to hear something full and vibrant," says singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan of Women and Country. "I wanted horns and fiddle, for it to be as big and beautiful sounding as it could with instrumentation. That changes the lyrics and tone of what you're writing."

Those instincts are evident across the album's tracks, a lush collection that blends country, blues and folk into a poignant aural evocation of rural landscapes. From the soft snare and forlorn strings of "Nothing But the Wide World For Us" and defiantly proud lyrics of "Down On Our Own Shield" ("It's a struggle, it's a strain / it's all give and no take / whatever it is now, it's up to our waists") to the dirgey country strains of "Smile When You Call Me That," which describes a love gone bad in deceptively minimal terms ("I'm drunk and you're insane / I can't quit and you won't change / Ain't no half-hearted Romeo / why do you treat me so?"), the 40-year-old's latest displays an artful mastery of roots-rock language and musical phrasing. And where his previous record, 2008's Seeing Things, was a stripped back "exercise in limitations," Women and Country is the work of a mature performer vested in exploring the byways of the American songbook