Revel. From the first chord. Sad, longing. A guitar, a bass, organ, drums. Soulig, bluesy. Music for very, very late at night, for the time when time no longer plays a role.

Some songs take you on a journey. With just a few chords, takes you somewhere within a few bars: to a sunny beach, to a pulsating big city – or like here: to a shabby dive at the ass of the world into the “Hard Luck Café”. Keith Stegall is the tour guide of this sad folk ballad.

That voice. A woman? A man? Clearly, that can’t be said when she finally appears after several bars at the song “Home” as if from far away. Joshua Hyslop, who owns this warm and unisexual voice, is a singer/songwriter from the Canadian prairie state of Saskatchewan.

A piano. Violins. A carried mood. A slender guy stands in the video in black jeans, black turtleneck sweater and a little too big Stetson in a church, in which the sunlight falls dramatically through coloured glass windows … and Tim McGraw, that slim guy, as a dark angel.

Big songwriting. A few sentences, short and straightforward like Hemingway’s – and you’re all there with him. In the storyteller Tracy Lawrence.

Although “Used To The Pain” serves typical country clichés – loneliness, highways, lost love – the track written by Mark Nesler and Tony Martin gets to one’s heart.

A very personal pearl: "When She Cries" by the country rock band Restless Heart. A formation, which was compared with the Eagles again and again with polyphonic singing and cuddly harmonies and had its great time in the 90s. But also: a band with first-class...