Shawn Mullins

Former army airborne soldier Shawn Mullins is a sensitive tough guy. Inside the sleeve of
Soul's Core – the Atlanta troubadour's seventh album but his first on a major label – his
motorcycle T-shirt proclaims benefiting muscular dystrophy. When he tells us "freedom's
just a metaphor," he sounds like a parody of a world-weary beautiful loser. But his music
has a hangover mood as unmawkish as Kris Kristofferson's eternal "Sunday Morni... More >

Sincerity was smug long before irony was, and while Mullins devoted a long, honorable folk-circuit career to reinventing the feeling before he stumbled on his very own "Taxi"--six indie albums in the trunk of his car and he could still muse, "I don't know what I've been lookin' for, maybe me"!--I figure he'd rather be called smug than dumb or, heaven knows, insincere. Pretty good at observing/concocting the kind of composite characters journalists get fired for, he's so wrought up about their humanity that he rarely captures their humor or grace. That would require establishing a distance from them, and while they may live with distance, poor souls, he can't countenance it in himself. He's like a one-night stand who feels constrained to tell you he loves you instead of making clear why he finds you attractive. Feels icky, right? (Grade: C+)