He rarely plays live, but newcomer Rodine's self-titled long-player on Mercy Recordings is a performance in itself: It kicks off with a stark reading of Dylan's "New Morning," which is gutsy enough, never mind all the freshly unwrapped reworkings that follow (to name a few, covers of Ray Charles's "The Jealous Kind," Johnny Cash's "There You Go," Hank Williams's "Last Night I Heard You Crying in Your Sleep," and a pensive dusting-off of the public domain nugget, "Mother's Last Words to Her Daughter"). To be sure, this is a record that sounds like it could've been made in a Minneapolis coffee shop in the '60s, or the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia anytime, but its nods to musical traditions are secondary to Rodine's sweet picking and singing, and the haunting chemistry forged by his collaborators, including Tony Glover, Paul Cebar, the Front Porch Swingin' Liquor Pigs, and the late Dave Ray.