Steve Earle is the poster boy for an “Americana” genre—a genre that isn’t quite folk, country, blues or rock—but while his work has drawn from those genres, his synthesis only seemed like an expert handling of their tropes and devices for a long time. Those classic forms didn’t seem like constraints, and that in most ways, his imagination fit rather easily into their habits. “Copperhead Road,” for example, is a folk song, no amount of arena rock guitars and booming drums can change that.

His work has become more personal—which is not the same as confessional—in the last few years, and The Revolution Starts …Now! and Washington Square Serenade are more interesting for it. They’re not uniformly great (though most of the new album is very good), but the genre-crossing seems more necessary and productive. The album is a result of living in Greenwich Village, and he celebrates living in the most urban city in America (“Down Here Below”) in the most Nashville song on the album. He swings back at Lou Dobbs and the anti-immigrant crowd with “City of Immigrants,” a folk song with a Brazilian energy courtesy of Forro in the Dark. The lovely “Come Home to Me” reflects a guy happy in love, so what else would he do but loop drums underneath?

The album is still recognizably Earle (“Jericho Road” and “Oxycontin Blues” will do the trick), but Washington Square Serenade sounds modern throughout, even when Earle self-consciously evokes the classic folk troubadours on “Steve’s Hammer (for Pete).”