Country music has always been rooted in a dichotomy of sinful fun and spiritual redemption. On his new double album Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, country/roots legend Marty Stuart and his crack backup band The Fabulous Superlatives take the listener on a journey through both sides of the country experience and shine a light on how without the sin, there isn’t much point to being saved.

Saturday Night kicks right off with the Jerry Lee Lewis-style rollicker “Jailhouse,” which compares the title character’s marriage to a sentence in the federal pen, and continues with the boogie-woogie heartbreak tale “Geraldine,” which sounds like Stuart might have listened to the some of the Rolling Stones’ late 1960s/early 1970s efforts at interpreting country. Even the depressingly titled “I’m Blue I’m Lonseome features upbeat fiddling, and the self-explanatory “Look at the Girl” is built on a main riff directly lifted from Them’s “Gloria,” rerouted along the Appalachian Trail.

Sunday Morning lives up to its name as a collection of God-fearing, reflective tunes – two songs includes the word “Gospel” in the title and another two feature the word “Heaven,” but Stuart comes from a tradition where religion can be fun. Some numbers, like “Uncloudy Day” (featuring a gorgeous vocal contribution from gospel icon Mavis Staples), are slow and thoughtful. However, “Boogie Woogie Down the Jericho Road” is as rocking and carefree as anything on “Saturday Night,” and “Cathedral” (featuring Pastor Evelyn Hubbard among others), celebrates the “cathedral of the heart” with a driving beat.

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning features as much rock n roll as it does country, and would not be out of place in a CD collection that included the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan or Jack White, among others. In recent years the lines between different genres of American music have become blurred, but Stuart reminds us that the lines were always somewhat arbitrary and artificial, anyway.