"Peace... Like A River" is Gov't Mule's new album

Southern rock royalty carouses with friends old and new.

Few American rock bands have maintained dual versatility and dexterity for the last 30 years as well as Gov't Mule, an Allman Brothers offshoot that long ago shaped its own eccentric orbit through the powerful playing and vision of guitarist Warren Haynes. 

These dozen songs are a prime distillation of their essential pantheism, stretching from the searing piano-and-six-string soul of Made My Peace to the spirited funk testimonial of Dreaming Out Loud, a Civil Rights reader rendered by dynamo vocalists Ivan Neville and Ruthie Foster. 

Indeed, the Mule has often been at its best in the company of others (see the excellent two-volume set The Deep End). Guest turns here by the Waits-summoning Billy Bob Thornton, the irrepressible Celisse, and old pal Billy Gibbons (in full-on modern-rock form) animate the core quartet, pushing them into a rarified space of provocative Southern prog. Think Muscle Shoals with an acute Canterbury crush.