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In the half-dozen or so times I've seen Justin Townes Earle, he always seemed to be right on the brink of nailing it, but just missing it — either the performance was a little unpolished, or, in the case of his last two albums, the songwriting wasn't quite there.

But on Sunday night at The State Room, Earle was a performer at the top of his game, touring behind a terrific new album — "Kids in the Street," which was released last week — he was engaging and entertaining and, backed up by the Toronto alt-country cow-punk band The Sadies, knocked it out of the park.

Earle seemed energized by the songs on the new album and still sprinkles in fan favorites from the previous recordings; he joked and bantered with the audience as he narrated his way through the evening.

Earle opened the evening with "Champagne Corolla," the swinging first track of "Kids," and led into his second song explaining, "I discovered, after extensive study, that Bruce Springsteen wrote a lot of songs about trying to talk a girl into getting into a car."

"Maybe a Moment," he said, was like that, but it was a teenage boy trying to coax a girl to run away to Memphis, Tenn. He followed up with "One More Night in Brooklyn," a breakup song for the town he described as a place full of diverse and interesting people whom "I just can't stand."

"What's She Crying For" was a throwback country homage that sounded like it could be straight off a George Jones album, with Paul Niehaus' pedal steel guitar backing up the mournful tone.

Every song came with a story. "Black Eyed Suzy" is about a prostitute, and Earle joked, "What, you don't have prostitutes here? I come from the home of the Southern Baptist Convention. They want you to believe they don't have prostitutes there, too, but boy, do they ever."

He played his mean song "Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now," and, with "apologies to Professor Longhair," played the peppy New Orleans-infused "15-25."

At that point, the backup band left and Earle played some of this stripped-down acoustic tunes with his trademark finger-picking blues style — "They Killed John Henry," a song he dedicated to his grandfather, the moving "Mama's Eyes" followed by a slowed-down rendition of Paul Simon's "Graceland," which is a bonus track on "Kids."

Earle finished the main set with "Short-haired Woman" and returned for a two-song encore, featuring "Faded Valentines" and "Harlem River Blues."

It was, hands down, the best I've seen Earle perform in Salt Lake City, with a polish and confidence and solid new album that should bode well for the direction of his career.

The Sadies, who backed Earle up, also opened for him, and the band that has been a fixture in the honky tonk, country world was remarkably solid, sounding almost as if they'd written a bunch of old-school country tunes and then played them twice as fast with more twang and attitude, a metal version of quasimetal cow-punk that, one friend commented, sounded like it was born on a speedball fueled road trip from Bakersfield, Calif., to Luckenbach, Texas. They were incredibly entertaining and worth seeing if they come back through.

Twitter: @RobertGehrke