High Lonesome is a mature record by a seasoned, forward-thinking country artist. Randy Travis, like George Strait and Alan Jackson, saw the new young bucks heading his way up the charts with a watered-down version of the country music he held sacred. And Travis is a direct descendent of the greats like George Jones and Merle Haggard as well as Jim Reeves and Ernest Tubb. Travis wanted to articulate his vision of the music further and entrench it deeper in its roots, which were beginning to give way to the faux rock and pop styles of Garth Brooks and his dire ilk, who wore bachelor pad curtains for shirts. Travis co-wrote five of the album's ten tracks, including a trio with Jackson. Of those, A Better Class of Losers is the song that Brooks wishes he could have written. This is the angry side of the George Jones/Tammy Wynette version of We're Not the Jet Set. Stinging dobros and pedal steels underline every one of Travis' indictments of yuppie culture. In addition, I'd Surrender All shows the pair digging deep into the territory Conway Twitty inhabited before he urbanized his sound, and their Forever Together is as fine a country love ballad as the 1990s produced; it's a song Hag would have been proud to record back in the day.

1		Let Me Try
2		Oh, What a Time to Be Me
3		Heart of Hearts
4		Point of Light
5		Forever Together
6		Better Class of Losers
7		I'd Surrender All
8		High Lonesome
9		Allergic to the Blues
10		I'm Gonna Have a Little Talk