What first made Southern rock & roll interesting to Northernets (this Northerner, anyway, but, hey, my great-grandfather was an artillery captain for General Lee, so I'm saving my Confederate money, boys) was not whether Duane Allman was technically the world's best slide guitarist—it was that he played with the greatest passion. Lynyrd Skynyrd understood this distinction on a gut level when, in "Sweet Home Alabama," they told Neil Young to stick his nose into somebody else's business.

If Dickey Betts understands this distinction, it is evident only rarely on Atlanta's Burning Down, his second album with Great Southern. The problem is especially troubling on the title track, which Betts sings in the persona of a Georgian soldier who has fought most of the Civil War around Virginia but splits for home because "Jenny" is in Atlanta, to which General Sherman has just set the torch. Your city is in flames, your girlfriend likely has a cannonball in her pancreas, you have just deserted, your cause is finished—so you're going to be a little upset, right? Wrong, if you're Dickey Betts, who sings this song with all the urgency of a man looking back on something sort of sad that happened 114 years ago, rather than as a man struggling home to see if his life is shattered. (The guy isn't even pissed off at the Yankees.)

The rest of the songs, though well played, fall short of originality. Betts and Great Southern sound almost like a band of studio musicians: highly talented, but lacking a powerful, unifying, personal vision. This becomes dismayingly clear on the final cut, "Mr. Blues Man," where Bonnie Bramlett sings one verse with such passion that you wish she sang lead on the rest of the stuff.

Dickey Betts' best work in the past has been on happy, uptempo numbers like "Ramblin' Man" and "Blue Sky." If he wants to continue exploring other realms of the human mind, he ought to take some Method acting lessons and truly re-create the experience for his listeners. (RS 267)

CHARLES M. YOUNG