TO MISQUOTE Jon Landau and his immortal verdict on Bruce Springsteen, I have seen the future of country music and it’s not Sturgill Simpson.

Simpson set the bar high for his debut album High Top Mountain, saying he wanted to make “the purest, most uncompromising, hard country album anyone has made in 30 years”.

There were also lofty comparisons with George Jones and Waylon Jennings. Alas, the reality is more mundane.

Routine country rockers and lachrymose ballads, with clichéd lyrics and unremarkable vocals, make High Top Mountain a difficult climb.

No one can fault Simpson for trying and his depiction of the struggles of hungry musicians and the working class in his native Appalachia could have been moving in different hands. But Steve Earle, Willie Nelson or Gram Parsons this ain’t.

Only the haunting ballad Water In A Well rises above this morass of mediocrity, which takes country music back to the dark ages of Garth Brooks, instead of following the glorious trail blazed by Parsons and Earle.