Obviously, you guys are Millennials. Not a problem, you just don’t have the early cultural context (for the first two albums especially). As the seventies went on, country was the pushback to the prevailing disco-trend. These two albums are of their time, musically.
Lyrically, I get your confusion when comparing to the later philosophical and mystical songs. But these two albums were actually produced and published by a church. Terry’s true lyrical talent doesn’t get to come out until they go to artist controlled labels.
An example is the title track from “Shotgun Angel.” The original lyric is, “… I ran out of speed about six or seven hours ago.” The church-run label didn’t like the drug reference and changed it to “vitamins.”
