When Dwight Yoakam made his last album of original material seven years ago, he went lean, returning to the electric hillbilly sound of his first records. His new album represents another return: to the expansive tendencies of the music he made once he looked beyond the West Coast country roots of his early days. Yoakam’s guitar-based, Bakersfield fundamentalism certainly isn’t lacking here; witness a version of “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke” that makes clear he hasn’t lost his honky-tonk fastball (or his trademark hiccup). But “3 Pears” is dominated by the sort of incorporations that Yoakam employed in the ’90s: the pop elements that flesh out the driving country of “Take Hold of My Hand,” the horn and string swaths that amplify “It’s Never Alright,” the hillbilly moptop rave-up of “A Heart Like Mine,” the Buddy Holly whispers of “Long Way to Go” followed, a few tracks later, by a reprise with the singer accompanied only by piano. As such, it’s nothing more — or less — than the latest chapter in his extraordinary, funhouse-mirror version of honky-tonk traditionalism. (Out Tuesday)STUART MUNRO

ESSENTIAL “Long Way to Go”