The traveling song "95 South" is a tasty slab of crackling, boom-chicka-boom rockabilly, and the loping "Wind Gonna Blow You Away" evokes the spectrum of Texas Gulf Coast sounds by mixing razor-sharp acoustic country-blues guitar with jaunty Tex-Mex/conjunto accordion. "Carnival Bum" is the most ambitious track here, alternating a stark, spoken narrative -- accompanied by some atypical (for Ely) atmospherics that'd sound more at home on a Beth Orton or Steely Dan recording -- with plaintive harmonica-laden folk rock. The high point, though, is the title track, a regal, bluesy lament that smolders like the Rolling Stones' best post-1971 ballads (think "Waiting on a Friend" or "Almost Hear You Sigh"). While not Ely's very best work -- the lyrics to "I Gotta Find Ol' Joe" and "Fightin' for My Life" are painfully awash in macho clichés -- Streets of Sin will please the faithful and will hopefully entice some neophytes into investigating the oeuvre of one of altcountry's godfathers.
