THE BEST SONGWRITER YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF?

by Robert Hilburn

With endorsements from Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle, David Olney might finally break through.

The late singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt put Olney on his short list of favorite writers, alongside Mozart, Lightnin' Hopkins and Bob Dylan -- a declaration as audacious and stubborn as Van Zandt's fiercely personal tunes.

So it's fitting that you find a Van Zandt-like daring in many of this Nashville craftsman's wonderfully detailed examinations of the human condition -- songs that show a disdain for the formulas and compromises that might lead them onto the sales charts.

Olney, in fact, may be the best songwriter to have released nearly a dozen albums without making the weekly list of the Top 200 sellers. "The Wheel" is still a longshot for the charts, but his growing list of endorsements (from Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle, among others) should eventually encourage a wider audience to sample his work.

There are hints of a concept in these songs about the spiritual and psychological struggles to maintain balance and hope. The best ones center on the search for comfort, love and simple clarity amid the roadblocks put up by demons and fate.

Backed by strikingly aggressive sonic textures (with violins sometimes dueling guitars) on such tracks as "Big Cadillac" and "God Shaped Hole" and then by only the most tender strains elsewhere, Olney gives us an album with the most original mix of heart and fury since Tom Waits' "Mule Variations."

There may be a couple of wrong notes on the album, but never a false one.