Arista/BMG
3 ½ stars

What Alan Jackson does, he does so well

Becoming the most universally praised, most important singer-songwriter in mainstream country music was surely not an effortless endeavor; still, Alan Jackson looks like he hasn't broken a sweat in 20 years. He sings with ease and mastery, conveying emotions without ever bellowing, and he writes the same way, using spare and simple words and melodies to build powerful songs. The Drive album and the Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) single only solidified Jackson's standing as the guy.

After a greatest hits album that contained the lovely Remember When, Jackson returns with What I Do, an album that might seem at first to be a step backward. Jackson wrote only five of the album's 12 songs, and two of those (USA Today and If French Fries Were Fat Free) are of the cute but inconsequential variety.

But this thing'll grow on you like kudzu on a rural roadside. Jackson's self-penned You Don't Have To Paint Me a Picture and Too Much of a Good Thing are classic A.J., and his choices of outside material, from Adam and Shannon Wright's If Love Was a River to Brent Baxter and Erin Enderlin's Monday Morning Church, are unerring.

A live cut of To Do What I Do, from last year's CMA awards show, serves as a lovely statement of purpose, and Billy Burnette and Shawn Camp's Burnin' the Honky Tonks Down is a purposeful stomper among all the balladry. Throughout, Jackson sings like he's Alan Jackson, which is to say that his honest, earnest voice has lost none of its power. n

Peter Cooper, Staff Writer