George Strait gets more au courant than usual on "Troubadour." Most of the productions beef up his old honky-tonk with extra instruments, big-room reverb and other rock techniques now favored by country radio. Although Strait recorded the album (like its 2006 predecessor, "It Just Comes Natural") at Jimmy Buffett's studio in Key West, Fla., it aims for modern Nashville style. In the title song, which addresses his age, Strait insists, "Nothin's gonna change what I am," but that doesn't stop him and his co-producer, Tony Brown, from treating the tune as a midtempo rock march.

Tony Baker (ENLARGE)
George Strait
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The songs touch Strait's usual bases — true love, lost love, Texas geography — but the more ambitious ones also consider birth and death. The album's centerpiece is "I Saw God Today," a new father's epiphany set to a pedal-steel-topped power ballad. In the ballad "Give Me More Time," Strait sympathizes with a farmer facing foreclosure and a young man who is terminally ill.

The updated Strait sounds as amiable and confident as ever, but the punchier production doesn't equal more grit. Instead it lessens the distance between Strait and younger country singers who are just as cautious and sentimental and who can't claim traditionalism as the reason.

—Jon Pareles, New York Times