As country radio slouches increasingly toward pop, most hard-core country performers have little choice but to get with the program or pack up for Branson, Mo. But not Dwight Yoakam. On his sixth album, Yoakam pulls off a near miracle: Staying stone country for his core following, and turning progressive enough for radio, without alienating either audience.
The trick is in the instrumentation — updating old-fashioned country shuffles with Elvis Presley attitude and long, Eric Clapton-style guitar outros — and in the songs, such as ''Ain't That Lonely Yet,'' a big pop kiss-off to a black-hearted girlfriend. While Yoakam pays sly tribute to his country heroes, he also makes a stylish tip of the hat to Roy Orbison and John Lennon in ''Fast as You,'' his first up-tempo rock song and the album's premier head-turner. Not everything works — the organ on ''Home for Sale'' sounds like a cut-rate funeral home, and ''Wild Ride'' is a blatant Rolling Stones ripoff. But otherwise, this is music for the long haul. A-
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