STEVE Earle is American music's Michael Moore. Like the Bush-hating filmmaker, Earle dedicates himself to pricking his country's conscience.

Earle is also a one-time mess who struggled with drug addiction, served time in prison and found redemption through his music, releasing a series of prodigiously good albums, including the acclaimed Jerusalem.

Compared with those, The Revolution Starts Now sounds only halfway there. The reason, as Earle suggests in his sleevenotes, is a desire to influence the presidential election, hence prickly thought is sacrificed in the name of banner waving. Produced in a political rush, this 37-minute album contains the same song twice, beginning and ending with the rabble-rousing title track.

It's a good song, but not that good. Home To Houston is the best of a batch of songs about the Iraq war, while Condi Condi sinks the boat with a cumbersome calypso in which Earle pretends to make romantic overtures to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

F The CC is a four-letter rant against, well, just about everything.

There are delights, notably Comin' Around, a rough-and-tender country ballad with Emmylou Harris, and The Seeker, in which the politics well up from the personal, making the message all the more powerful.

Earle deserves undying praise for standing up to America's lynch-mob mentality, but this album is not fully up to scratch.

Updated: 08:42 Thursday, August 26, 2004