Album: The Flatlanders, The Odessa Tapes (New West)

There's mystique and there's the Flatlanders, who may not have invented Texan music, or even distilled it, but certainly did more in their short career to invest it with a special mystery.

Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore went on to separate careers having cut one album together in 1973. Before that they did this, 14 songs of keening, romantic acoustic music of great seriousness and lightness of being.

Essential listening for children of the cosmos.