Although first released in 2009, the debut album from Chattanooga singer/songwriter Kevin Lane doesn't sound dated at all but instead resonates with a powerful relevancy in today's turbulent times. Each song fits like a puzzle piece into life's grand photomosaic while touching on themes of love, regret, belonging, escape, aging, and redemption. Listening to the album is much like looking at a photo album, not so much with sentimentality as with a deep respect for a life lived with passion. The opening track, "Don't Mess With Me,' rocks with a respect-demanding swagger. The singer draws a line in the sand and promises to win the unnamed conflict with words that border on self-destruction: "Got nothing to live for/Got nothing to lose/If I go down/You go down, too." Lane originally wrote the song for Johnny Cash, but the country legend died before he could hear it. One can easily imagine Cash singing it on one of his American recordings. The love songs on the album, "I Don't Deserve You," “Right Where I Belong," and the title track, each stake out different positions on relationship. In the alt-country twinged "I Don’t Deserve You," Lane unhabashedly acknowledges that he has done nothing to earn his lover's love and pays tribute to the woman to gave him everything she had while only taking his name in return. In the gorgeous slow ballad “Right Where I Belong,” the sparse arrangement of only acoustic guitar and mandolin backs a dreamlike vocal that invokes a moonlit night and the anticipation of coming home to the singer’s lover. One of the album’s highlights, however, is the beautiful title track, “Autumn Sky.” Here Lane’s mandolin shines as he sings of love as a season complete with meetings and partings. When he sings “Wake up dear/October’s here/Come see what the day reveals,” he also knows that “the autumn day will fade away/And we’ll sing a winter tune” hoping to “meet again beneath the autumn sky.” Lane’s keen awareness of place is evident on “Chattanooga Boy” and Savannah Wave to Me,” but not without irony. On the former Lane celebrates his place of birth “where the river meets the mountain” and declares that “you can go home again if you never really leave.” However, in the album’s breathtaking closer, “Savannah Wave to Me,” Lane regrets fate’s choice in not making him a native son of Georgia’s oldest city as a cacophony of guitar, drums, and strings accompany him desperately pleading, “Could it be that I’m your long lost son?/Don’t you know me?/Take me as your own.” The album rocks hard but playfully on “Weapons of Mass Distraction” and “Passion for the Game,” with solid guitar work and steady-on drumming. The echo-drenched vocals give Lane a platform for expressing his frustration at the trivial parts of life and his passion for the essential. The powerful country-rock gospel/biker tune, “Riding His Harley,” elegantly states Lane’s belief in redemption for the disenfranchised. When Lane sings, “It doesn’t matter if your life is full of things so bad you cannot tell/Jesus came to heal the sick and not waste time with the well,” it comes straight from the singer’s heart and gut. Autumn Sky is a solid debut album that has something in it for nearly every facet of life. Highly recommended.