THE NOTABLE singer-songwriter Steve Earle became notorious last month when news broke that he’d written a blues ballad about John Walker Lindh–the recently convicted American Taliban fighter from Marin County, California. This week Earle’s new album hits stores, and “Jerusalem” contains much else besides “John Walker’s Blues” to irritate the discerning American listener. As political statement, the album is stunning for its juvenile and morally obtuse reading of the current moment. But as music (may the political gods forgive me), it is pretty good. It’s not the best album Earle’s made, but it’s much better than, say, Bruce Springsteen’s politically correct September 11 album, “The Rising.”

This isn’t the first time Earle has written political music, and he doesn’t bother to hide his feelings. “Frankly, I’ve never worn red, white, and blue that well,” he says in a three-paragraph message on the first page of the liner notes. His ambivalence about this country dates back to Vietnam: “We sent 55,000 of our sons to die far from home in the belief that if we didn’t arrest what we perceived as an ‘evil empire’ abroad that the last domino would ultimately fall at our own doorstep.”