I Feel Alright

1	Feel Alright 3:04
2	Hard-Core Troubadour 2:41
3	More Than I Can Do 2:37
4	Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You 3:21
5	Now She's Gone 2:48
6	Poor Boy 2:55
7	Valentine's Day 2:59
8	The Unrepentant 4:31
9	CCKMP 4:30
10	Billy and Bonnie 3:39
11	South Nashville Blues 3:39
12	You're Still Standin' There / Lucinda Williams 3:24

Barnes & Noble

I FEEL ALRIGHT is the album that brought Steve Earle all the way back from years of drug abuse and self-destructive personal and professional behavior. Before toppling into the abyss, though, he got control of his demons and set about reclaiming his hard-rocking, leather-jacketed prole legacy. Coming in the wake of the dense, crackling, acoustic-driven SLOW TRAIN COMING, 1996's I FEEL ALRIGHT sounded as if Earle were picking up where 1988's tender-tough masterpiece COPPERHEAD ROAD left off, without any hitches in the timeline. "I've been to hell and now I'm back again/I feel alright," he claims on the title track. And then he proceeds to prove it all night. "Hard Core Troubadour," the rough-and-tumble narrative "Billy and Bonnie," and a fierce, rocking duet with Lucinda Williams, "You're Still Standin' There," are of a piece with the most incendiary work produced by the brash, young, out-of-control Earle. It's a moment a lot of Earle-watchers feared might never come again. But it did, and it's something to behold. Like the artist himself. Daniel Durchholz

All Music Guide

Steve Earle quietly announced he was back in action and capable of making substantial, heartfelt music again with his 1994 acoustic album Train a Comin', but on 1995's I Feel Alright Earle showed he was truly back in fighting shape, and from the album's first moments he sounds ready to roar and holds nothing back. While Earle's battle with drug abuse and his brief stay in prison aren't explicitly addressed on this album (except on the harrowing "CCKMP," in which Earle confesses "cocaine cannot kill my pain" and "heroin is the only thing/the only gift the darkness brings"), the hurt brought to himself and others by his betrayals runs through many of these songs, sometimes with humor ("Hard Core Troubadour"), sometimes with regret ("Valentine's Day"), and sometimes with a painful self-awareness ("Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You" and "The Unrepentant"). But I Feel Alright isn't about addiction and loss so much as recovery and starting over again, and if the songs often concern Earle's misdeeds, the strength of the music finds him confronting his demons without flinching and conjuring up some of the powerfully muscular rock and affecting country of his life. And like Train a Comin', I Feel Alright shows Earle finding the courage and confidence to make a record just the way he wants, and this may be Earle's finest hour in the studio -- the production is tough, resonant, and a perfect match for the material, the players bring their A game without showboating, and Earle's rough but passionate vocals are pure, honest, and direct on every cut. I Feel Alright affirmed that Steve Earle's brush with oblivion had not only failed to silence him, but he was a more courageous artist when he came out the other side, and no one who has heard this record is likely to argue that point. Mark Deming