All the Way from Memphis

This one moves like a shaggy, road-weary story told at 2am by someone who's been everywhere and can't stop talking about it. The rhythm has a loping, almost boogie quality — shuffling drums, a piano line that sounds like it was recorded in a bar car on a moving train, guitars that are loose rather than precise. It's fundamentally a road narrative, a song about the particular exhaustion and exhilaration of the touring musician's life, the absurd distances between where you started and where you end up. Hunter's vocal has a storytelling quality here, less singer than raconteur, spinning the tale with worn-in specificity. Production is warm and slightly ramshackle, which suits the subject perfectly — you can almost smell the cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Culturally this is Mott the Hoople at their most self-aware, writing about the rock and roll life from inside it rather than mythologizing it from a distance. Reach for this on a long drive through landscapes that blur together, or when you want music that acknowledges the unglamorous side of living for something — the miles, the distances, the perpetual strangeness of geography.