Country is a genre that can go real bad, real quick. When it’s raw and honest (think Johnny Cash) it can be brilliant, but with too much production polish you end up with Taylor Swift. Joy Williams was a Christian artist very much in the pop-country camp, until she decided to leave CCM behind and team up with John Paul White to form The Civil Wars.

Barton Hollow is the album that they’ve created together, and it’s very, very good. If you’ve heard Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ superlative Raising Sand, you’ll be familiar with what’s happening here: spare, acoustic music populated by piano, double bass, acoustic guitar, and harmonised vocals.

For the most part the songs are assorted takes on the ups and downs of relationships, with some religious imagery thrown in too. The title track features a pulse-quickening gothic country stomp that raises dust while telling a vague tale involving a hundred grand, a harrowed escape-artist and, of course, a “preacher man.” It’s fantastic stuff, and it’s sad that it took leaving the Christian industry for these artists to start making music of this quality.

Four out of five stars