Throughout his decade-and-a-half-long career, Cory Branan has been too punk for country, too country for punk, too Memphis for Nashville, and probably a little too Cory Branan for anyone s damn good. He has proven himself as a top-notch songwriter (Chuck Ragan recently called him the greatest songwriter of our generation ), fierce lyricist (in Lucero s Tears Don t Matter Much they sing that Cory has, a way with words that ll bring you to your knees ), and a hyperdynamic performer with the ability to fingerpick finer than 60s Greenwich Village folkies and brutally strum like a proto punk shredder. Across three albums, he s made collective struggles poetic and breakthroughs into sympathetic acts of populist heroism.