The grey-haired veteran smiling benignly from the cover of his new album is only faintly reminiscent of the curly-haired youth who played bass with The Byrds and joined Stephen Stills in Manassas. But even when he was patrolling the frontiers of psychedelia, traditional country and bluegrass were always Chris Hillman's first love. You won't find them done much better than this, either, since The Other Side is an impeccable collection of vintage country tunes and new versions of material from the Hillman catalogue.

He opens with a remarkably persuasive Eight Miles High, which keeps the eerie vocal harmonies of the Byrds original but uses fiddle and dobro instead of cosmic 12-string guitar, and has another go at his Manassas-era classic It Doesn't Matter. In between, he ladles on the old-time religion in pieces such as Heaven Is My Home and Heavenly Grace, but it's done with such restraint that the sentiments are never cloying.