As the son of one of Canada’s best loved singer-songwriters, Barney Bentall, Dustin Bentall has a lot to live up to. His songwriting skills and musical chops showed promise with his first independently-released album, Street With No Lights. With his second album, he’s surrounded himself with a top notch band, including Del Cowsill on bass and Luke Doucet on guitar, plus teaming up with Vancouver’s Cameron Latimer in co-writing several songs. The band holed up in the heritage town of Ashcroft, B.C., home to John Ellis and Leslie Alexander’s house/studio called Nashcroft Manor and have produced a remarkably mature album. The music here falls somewhere between the earnest, melodic folk-country of Fred Eaglesmith and the hard-drinking, drug-addled outlaw country of Hank Williams III. Veering not too far into either country or rock, Bentall straddles both worlds, adding some tasteful lapsteel here to spice up a song too on the rock side, and using some twisted lyrics to roughen up a country song, His take on Corin Raymond’s (of Toronto roots band The Undesirables) “Three Thousand Miles” is the best song on the album, with its tale of a stoned cross-country bus trip finding earnest truth in Dustin’s vocals. Singing “She was my heroine, now my money’s gone.” on “Pontiac” stirs up thoughts of Elvis Costello with its double entendre meaning. Given a few more albums and tours under his belt, we could be looking at the next big star in Canadian country music blossoming right here.