Like most members of the alternative-country club, the Bottle Rockets (St. Louis chapter) and Old 97's (Dallas chapter) have learned their music history backward. Starting with punk rock's door-opening conceit that anyone might play music, they have worked through Skynyrd to Waylon and Willie, then to Haggard and Hank. Nashville will hardly recognize the result, replete with volume, speed and blunt frustration, but both bands – on their third discs now – play blue-collar songs that (at least topically) have more connection to classic country than most of what's on the radio.

The Bottle Rockets offer poignant, precise takes on such traditional subjects as love lost ("Smokin' 100's Alone"), love thwarted by a fuel pump ("Indianapolis," reprised from their first 45) and loving drinking ("One of You"). Brian Henneman, principal songwriter and vocalist, has the bluff honesty of Gary Cooper's sidekick, the one who gets wounded and walks with a limp forever after. Henneman has emerged as a first-class songwriter, able without apparent artifice to capture life in a simple phrase. The band, alternately laconic and lunatic, matches his tough, vulnerable tone. It's not quite country, for no country outfit could so openly betray its fondness for Motörhead, but it is an honest, enduring album.

Coming from a Texas tradition linking Kinky Friedman to Poison 13, Old 97's are closer to speed twang. Too Far to Care storms through 13 tracks like a steer on crank, so persistently that the songs become monochromatic veils concealing any emotion. Lost in that stampede are sad, lonely tunes like "Broadway" and "Niteclub" that might better be served by finesse. Sure, they can sprint through "Four Leaf Clover," the closing duet with Exene Cervenkova, summoning the ghost of vintage X. But few songs – the keys to timeless country – survive the catharsis of punk frenzy. (RS 767)

GRANT ALDEN