Daily Download: "Virginia," Vic Chesnutt

Spitting out ragged poetry in a voice full of warmth and full of bile, Vic Chesnutt has never sounded so much like Bob Dylan as he does on his wonderful new record, "Ghetto Bells" -- few other singers' voices sound so thoroughly pickled and stewed and deteriorated by a lifetime's worth of strong emotions, ravaged by the world but unbowing in defiance. But it's been a long time since Dylan assembled a band as great as the one Chesnutt has put together here, with Bill Frisell, Jayhawks drummer Don Heffington, and most crucially the great Van Dyke Parkes. whose string arrangement brings out a sweeping, almost mythic quality in the shadowy, darkly haunting album opener, "Virginia."