An 18-song sampler of
Steve Earle's MCA years and drawn from the albums
Guitar Town (1986),
Exit 0 (1987), Copperhead Road (1988),
The Hard Way (1990), and the 1991 live set
Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator,
Devil's Right Hand manages at once to capture the tone and feel of
Earle's early work without necessarily choosing the best songs from the period, making this an adequate introduction but hardly more than that.
Earle, of course, was his own worst enemy during the 1980s, battling drug addiction and countless personal demons along with record companies and authority figures everywhere (an approach that eventually landed him in prison), while somehow still managing to write and record great material like the title track. Living that life took its toll on
Earle, though, and the MCA albums were frequently spotty as a result. Re-emerging from incarceration in the 1990s as cranky and confrontational as ever, but now clean and sober,
Earle's later work is more balanced and focused, but there is a spark of reckless abandon in the best of the MCA songs that
Earle is unlikely to find again. Culled like this into a sampler set, though,
Earle, however irascible, seems subtly tamed and managed. Better to start at the beginning and pick up
Guitar Town, and proceed from there. ~ Steve Leggett