Too Long in the Wasteland

The album was produced by John Mellencamp (with Michael Wanchic and Larry Crane), who reconnected with McMurtry during the development of Falling from Grace; the film was written by McMurtry's father, Larry McMurtry, who passed along his son's demo tape.[8][9][10] The songs were written in Archer City, Texas, and at Mellencamp's studio in Indiana.[11] McMurtry was backed by members of Mellencamp's band, as well as by David Grissom.[12][13]

The songs are not autobiographical. Many were written to rebut the tendency of popular country music to sentimentalize rural and small-town life.[14]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[15]
Austin American-Statesman	[13]
Robert Christgau	B+[16]
MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide	[8]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[17]

The Chicago Reader wrote that "McMurtry mainly acts as a dispassionate observer, content to sketch the outlines of a situation and leave its meaning, or his opinion of it, largely up to the listener to infer."[18] Robert Christgau thought that "like so many singer-songwriters and so many local-colorists, he tends to a soft fatalism, especially when he tries a big statement."[16] Texas Monthly likened McMurtry's "droll" singing to Mark Knopfler's.[19] The Edmonton Journal described the album as "Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska in technicolor."[20]

The New York Times called the album "a collection of 11 dour songs that portray the spiritually desolate lives of people living in America's heartland."[21] Trouser Press concluded that "McMurtry’s lyrics read as riveting poetry, but they’re that much more powerful when heard in the company of a modest hook and a heartland backbeat."[12] The Globe and Mail stated that McMurtry "writes with mordant humor about tiny places in a vast land where suspicion, prejudice and vague threats linger behind the Main Street facades, where choices made in haste are mulled over years later."[22] The Washington Post considered that "while his singing often takes on the dry, colorless, detached tone of the narrator, his songs are full of sharply drawn tales and three-dimensional characters."[23]

AllMusic noted that McMurtry "has a smooth, low voice that carries a Western twang from his life in Texas."[15] Salon deemed the album full of "catchy and harsh country-folk songs filled with tortured Southern souls failing at love, failing at life or just talking about it in front of the gas station on a country road."[24] The Rolling Stone Album Guide labeled "Terry" "a great, unsentimental lament for a mixed-up rehab bad boy."[17]