Honky-tonk is the disco of country music, except that you don't dance to it, you drink to it. You drink a lot, which puts you in one of two moods: euphoric or despondent. A good honky-tonk song, like a good session on the barstool, can loosen you up to a revelation—about the injustice of love, the absurdity of one's station in life, the futility of it all. The first, classic period of honky-tonk is typified by the work of Lefty Frizzell, early Webb Pierce and Ferlin Husky and, especially, Hank Williams, whose "Honky Tonkin'" defines the genre.

On the heels of the liberating Outlaws (Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, et al.), a sort of neohonky-tonk is staggering through the mainstream of country music. It has been revitalized most forcefully by young performers weary of the pop orchestrations of progressive country and old performers who snort disgustedly at what they see as the hippie-pandering of the Outlaws. All the artists here are immersed in this neohonky-tonk in varying degrees; each has his own interests and obsessions outside the form as well. The only thing all honky-tonkers might agree upon is a contempt for teetotalism.

Moe Bandy is a good performer with whom to begin, because his historical inspiration is easy to locate. One of the finest songs on his best-of collection is "Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life," and it is Williams' complex sadness that Bandy renders so well. Bandy doesn't emulate Williams so much as he takes strength and solace from Williams' thrashing despair. To Bandy, the very fact of Williams' existence is enough to impel him to keep slogging through the world; Hank didn't give in, and neither will Moe. The new collection, I'm Sorry for You, My Friend, is uniformly dolorous but rarely oppressive. His humble crooning is always accompanied by sympathetic pedal steel, and together they often make Bandy's beefs positively invigorating.

Tompall Glaser's commercial break came two years ago when he was included in the Jennings-Nelson-Jesse Colter Outlaws album. Glaser is far from being one of those macho melodramatists, though; he doesn't have the thespian talent to pull it off. His honky-tonk is mostly honk, a plain, limited voice that hopes its inexpressiveness will be taken for stoic resilience.

Glaser's albums share a similar weakness, a tedious aimlessness. Only twice on his new record, The Wonder of It All, does Glaser rise above hollow, tough-guy images. "Duncan and Brady" is an engrossing story/song, a gunslinger anecdote laced with a single rock riff. The other tune of interest is the surprisingly moving "My Mother Was a Lady." Its success is due mostly to the fact that Glaser sounds like a young Hank Snow, and Snow's throaty innocence is exactly what makes this sob story convincing and touching.

Chuck McDermott is a young, Harvard-educated cowboy whose approach to old country and honky-tonk styles is influenced by the example of Gram Parsons. Like Parsons, McDermott may not accept all the moral values that traditional country lyrics espouse (Parsons was an L.A. anarchist; McDermott is a Boston liberal), but he performs it all so earnestly that words become superfluous; it's the emotion-soaked reediness of his voice that makes the aesthetic payoff.

Follow the Music is McDermott's second album, and it falters consistently by attempting too many gloppy ballads; last year's debut album, Chuck McDermott and Wheatstraw, was much spunkier. That collection and Follow the Music's "Another Way to Cry" display McDermott's considerable strengths: an ease and authority with honky-tonk writing, and a neat trick he has of describing depression with a boyish enthusiasm that is never inappropriate.

Joe Stampley's Sat. Nite Dance portrays a few of the ups of rural partying (the title song and "Baby, I Love You So") in addition to its skull-cracking downs ("Pour the Wine," "What Would I Do Then"). Stampley is both slyly intelligent and adventurous. He evinces some rock & roll proclivities in the understated double-tracking and the thumping chorus of "So Sick," and "What a Night" sounds like the Everly Brothers by way of Freddy Fender. Stampley can then follow these shakers with a stark consideration of middle age among the lower-middle class, "Backside of Thirty." Stampley's agonized vocals contain more subtleties than any documentary on the subject. With the possible exception of the endearingly erratic Gary Stewart, Stampley may be the best young honky-tonker in the biz; he sings with his heart, his brains and his liver.

David Allan Coe is not so much a singer of honky-tonk as he is a victim of it; his unrelentingly melancholy, ruminative ballads suggest someone who sits around feeling sorry for himself much too often. An ostentatious ex-con (until recently he called himself "The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy"), Coe usually writes about women who are either unbelievably virtuous or unbelievably loose, and sees things through a beery, sentimental haze.

Tattoo is better than his previous collections in that another of his standard topics, familial reminiscence, is presented with more precision and sincerity ("Daddy Was a God Fearin' Man"), and in "Just to Prove My Love for You," it's possible to think of him as being a bit more sensitive than his stud-yahoo persona usually allows. Not much more, though.

Finally, there is George Jones, the only contemporary performer whose exalted place in country music history is secure—secure, hell, it's cemented, just as firmly as Jones' jaws seem to be when he moans out a particularly intense lament. On I Wanta Sing, the most intense (and therefore, for Jones, the most effective) are "They've Got Millions in Milwaukee" and "If I Could Put Them All Together (I'd Have You)." Jones was deservingly lauded for last year's Alone Again, in which his ability to describe hellish isolation equaled French author Celine's, but I Wanta Sing is a more representative Jones album. In addition to the terrific songs already mentioned, there's a novelty number ("Old King Kong") and a hokey and barely fashionable C.B. spiritual, "It's a 10-33 (Let's Get Jesus on the Line)." In other words, I Wanta Sing is maddeningly uneven and is a perfect example of why George Jones is so highly regarded by his peers and yet so little appreciated outside core country circles. (RS 252)

KEN TUCKER