The sophomore long-player from cosmic country innovator James Wallaces Skyway Man project, World Only Ends When You Die is a ramshackle road trip billed as a psych-folk opera that evokes a Muscle Shoals-backed Grateful Dead piloting a boogie van into the Greek underworld. A classic heros journey spurned by the twin existential crises of paternal death and a world being torn asunder by disease and competing political ideologies, the ten-track set is awash in metaphysical angst, yet positively ebullient in its response to it. Recorded at Spacebomb in Wallaces native Virginia with the studios house band and Big Easy vocal duo the Lostines, Skyway Man effusively combines elements of country, folk, blues, gospel, R&B, and indie rock, sometimes all at once -- sonic touchstones include Randy Newman, Lee Hazlewood, Daniel Romano, Norman Greenbaum, Flaming Lips, and Dennis Wilson. Commencing with the slow-burning Muddy Water, Wallace knows that the road to enlightenment is fraught with danger (Muddy water like a piece of ancient church glass flowing/Were on the darkest stretch, but the bend ahead is glowing), but he remains sanguine throughout the expedition. The radiant gospel-rock suite Sometimes Darkness/Railroad/Sometimes Darkness Reprise looks to Jesus for affirmation, while the airy Rise of the Integratron peers into the inky blue, pairing billowy Canterbury-style progressive rock with a snippet of a 1953 speech by UFOlogist George Van Tassel. Its heady stuff, but Wallace and company imbue the proceedings with so much heart and soul -- and considerable pop acumen -- that the compulsion to hear and see where this sci-fi Canterbury Tales will go next never abates. ~ James Christopher Monger

Rovi