Years before trendy archivism and the resurrection of rockabilly, NRBQ were already pursuing their peculiar brand of piebald eclecticism, picking through rock & roll, blues and swing-time jazz to achieve an unconventional and personal patchwork. Their records were filled with delightfully weird juxtapositions, but they rarely achieved the loopy camp-reunion exuberance of the group's concerts. Tiddlywinks, their freshest album in years, maintains NRBQ's reputation for creative re-creation. On their first LP, back in 1969, these guys barreled through an eccentric version of Sun Ra's "Rocket Number Nine." On the new record, guitarist Al Anderson growls out a Cab Calloway imitation in their fruity rendition of the big-band classic "Music Goes Round and Around."

Led by Terry Adams' Thelonious Monk-meets-Little Richard, elbows-to-the-keyboard honky-tonking, NRBQ still have the moony air of adolescents, and their songs are pumped full of an innocence that emerges mainly as old-timey, bucolic rowdiness. "Me and the Boys," a jaunty cruisin'-an'-boozin' number, is as finely detailed as a classic Maine tall tale ("Muffler died/But we love that sound"). "Roll Call," a sort of pastoral "People Who Died," is absurdly moving, despite its wide-eyed, zingy doggerel. Adams' repeated calls of "Are you here?" over the rattle and roll of Tom Ardolino's drums can't help but underscore the group's own stubborn survival–defiantly odd, and loving every minute of it. (RS 337)

DEBRA RAE COHEN