The Boxmasters photo by Sandrine Lee, courtesy of Sawmill/Vanguard Records.

As on The Boxmasters, Modbilly offers two sides of one compelling, intensely felt story. One side offers twelve Boxmasters self-penned songs that feel a bit closer in spirit to the best moments of the acclaimed solo albums by Thornton. The originals on Modbilly include the most deeply felt and moving songs to ever grace a Boxmasters release, including such highlights as "Hollow Walls," "Going Home," "I Don't Wanna Know" and the poignant "I Never Let You Cry." Equally powerful is "Turn It Over," a haunting song written by Thornton and Brad Davis about a love letter that may come too late in a troubled relationship. As Thornton sings, "You know the desk in the bedroom/The one with all the scars/Look in the top left drawer you'll find/What's left of my heart."

Yet the wit and hard-earned wisdom one has come to expect from The Boxmasters is present and accounted for as demonstrated on the wonderfully titled "That's Why Tammy Has My Car," that feels very much of a piece with the standouts from the debut album -- including a classic line about feeling like "a debit to my gender" -- and even on "The Boxmasters Theme," the hilariously catchy theme song for the band lovingly crafted for the group by not one but two generations of Brill Building era songwriting royalty -- namely, Jeff Barry and Jed Leiber. As Thornton sings with lusty sincerity and conviction on "The Boxmasters Theme," "Do you have a hole/Deep inside your soul that needs fillin'/Well baby we're ready and willin'."

Once again, The Boxmasters have also artfully selected an eclectic group of cover songs that reflect their taste and sensibility in fascinating ways. For example, The Boxmasters version of Tom Rush's "Merrimack County" seems deeply connected to their own themes of the universal desire to leave home and to return on one's own terms. The Boxmasters have also recorded a classic country song by another King of the Road, the famously wry late great Roger Miller. Yet here they have chosen one of Miller's most straight-talking, heartbreaking gems, "Half A Mind," which the great Ernest Tubb helped make famous.

The Boxmasters have unearthed a lesser known masterpiece in the form of "Errol Flynn," a spectacularly effecting song written by Amanda McBroom with Gordon Hunt in tribute to her own father Ed Bruce, a Hollywood character actor who shared the silver screen with the legendary Flynn, among others. Just as impressively, as The Boxmasters did on The Boxmasters, the group even manages to take a song as familiar as The Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By," and "re-Master" it into something brand new and wonderful in its own right.

Like other classic albums made by gifted musical road warriors, Modbilly is a song cycle about love and loss, about escaping and about going home assuming that one figures out where the hell home is exactly. "I'm not sure what it looks like/But I know I'm going home," Thornton sings on "Going Home," which he wrote with Brad Davis.
One listen to Modbilly, however, and there's little doubt that The Boxmasters have now made their own music home and it's one that's been built to last.
Listen again and you'll be reminded that with these guys, there's no place like home.
- David Wild