Grace Woodroofe, Tim McGraw, Richard Galliano "Emotional Traffic" (Curb) In 2005, the year Toby Keith turned 44, he released "As Good as I Once Was," one of his most bellicose and smarmy singles in a career that specialized in them, and a declaration of potency in the face of encroaching middle age. The pugnacious Mr. Keith figured out that aging gracefully in country music, unlike in many other genres, can sometimes mean becoming even rougher and less warm than you were in your younger years. Tim McGraw, who is 44, comes from roughly the same generation as Mr. Keith, but from a whole other perspective. Mr. McGraw was never much of a bruiser to begin with, though early in his career he was sizzling with machismo, a romantic with a troublemaker streak. That's just a memory, though. The first single from "Emotional Traffic," his 11th studio album, is "Better Than I Used to Be," which may as well be a shrugging answer song to Mr. Keith's. Here is the fighter in decline, "Standing in the rain so long has left me with a little rust." What could keep him in contention, though? That's right, a little of your love: "I pinned a lot of demons to the ground/ Got a few old habits left/ But there's still one or two I might need you to help me get." Admitting that you can't go it alone is no great insight, but throughout this often tepid album, Mr. McGraw is conceding. A woman gives him only a fraction of her love on "One Part, Two Part," and he grins and bears it. The same is true on the Eric Carmen-esque "Halo," on which at least Mr. McGraw has hired someone to write a metaphor that bites where his voice doesn't: "Cover me with rage/ I'll take it like a circus lion, silent in my cage." The older Mr. McGraw gets, the more resistant he seems to grit. Texture has been all but absent from his voice since the mid-2000s-era of songs like "When the Stars Go Blue" and "Drugs or Jesus." "Only Human," a new duet with Ne-Yo, is a smooth slice of "80s whimper-soul but isn't as alluring, or as sui generis, as "Over and Over," Mr. McGraw's 2004 duet with the rapper Nelly. At some points on this album, as on "The One" and "Right Back Atcha Babe," Mr. McGraw appears to be channeling the endless youth of a Kenny Chesney. Even though he's never been a true stoic on the order of Alan Jackson or George Strait, Mr. McGraw has never sounded this casual. It doesn't suit him. After a listless several-song run toward the end of the album, Mr. McGraw closes with the bold, invigorated "Die by My Own Hand," a cover of a song by Halfway to Hazard. It's a statement of sly regret about how even the sort of love he was leaning on elsewhere on this album isn't nearly enough in the end. You changed me, baby/ Given enough time, girl, you might have saved me/ But then again, you might have just gone crazy. For the first time he's singing ruefully, with real bite. "Girl I don't blame you for nothing," he concedes. I'll always die by my own hand. Finally, a real stand. "Always Want" (Modular) Grace Woodroofe has a voice made for melancholy and danger: a husky, bluesy alto that lingers over each aching phrase of a ballad or steels itself to warn, in a song called "Bear," that, "I'm gonna have to hunt and kill you." She's 20, and her debut album, "Always Want," introduces a singer and songwriter who can be haunted in one song, jolting in the next and somehow always at home within the darkness she conjures. Ms. Woodroofe, who is Australian, was discovered as a teenager by Heath Ledger and went on to collaborate with songwriters including Mark Eitzel, with whom she wrote the title song. The album was produced by Ben Harper, the songwriter and guitarist whose band, the Relentless 7, backed her in the studio. At times the arrangements look back to folk-pop from the late 1960s. "I've Handled Myself Wrong" mingles folky acoustic and electric-guitar picking like something out of the bygone Laurel Canyon. "Always Want," with vibraphone and upright bass, echoes Tim Buckley and John Martyn as Ms. Woodroofe muses, "I always want what I can't have." "H." mourns Mr. Ledger above fingerpicked guitar and a string section. Stark, echoey piano chords are all that accompany Ms. Woodroofe in "You'll Never Find Me," one of the album's many breakup and separation songs. "I'll no longer be yours and you'll no longer be mine," she sings. But as she continues, the lament turns to a taunt: "Choose to make your own way/ "Cause you'll never find me." Ms. Woodroofe doesn't settle in any era and she doesn't stay quiet. With the dynamics of P. J. Harvey, "Transformer" blasts a blues-rock riff, then drops to a single plucked note, then goes on to crash and subside again and again. "Nocturnal," about a femme fatale with a "desolate interior," explodes out of a skulking bass line with distorted guitar and shards of dissonant piano.