Robert Earl Keen always delivers his quota of rambling songs. The beautifully crafted Gravitational Forces, however, turns around stories of guys whose ropes have run out. On his first album in more than three years, the singer-songwriter often backs down from the bravado of past blurts like "Whenever Kindness Fails". Not that it's absent in the breakneck remake of his signature "The Road Goes On Forever" or even the cover of Joe Dolce's homebound "Hall of Fame". Yet he dwells more on the troubled side of his drifting characters' lives: the wrong-side-of-the-law losers of "Wild Wind" or the homeless loner of "Not a Drop of Rain". Keen tweaks pavement-bound verities even further on the Dylanesque "Goin' Nowhere Blues" and the deadpan spoken-word title track, which takes out his frustration with a half-day sound check on the club's puzzling decor. If this debut for the Lost Highway label raises Keen's profile even further, the attention will be well deserved. --Rickey Wright