The Amazing Rhythm Aces represent the meeting ground of rockabilly, country outlaw and cosmic cowboy music. Temperamentally, they are slyly rebellious, funny and impassively sentimental. Musically, they are as dazzlingly accomplished as they are unpretentious.

Too Stuffed to Jump is a more consistent album than its predecessor, Stacked Deck. And while it lacks a song with the instant appeal of "Third Rate Romance," it confirms my feeling that the Amazing Rhythm Aces are the finest Southern rock band to emerge in years.

Both albums were recorded at Sam Phillips's Memphis studios, and not surprisingly the Aces' music is deeply interwoven with rockabilly tradition. Lead singer and chief writer Russell Smith sounds, at various times, like Charlie Rich, Robbie Robertson or Doug Sahm. In fact, the group has something of the feeling of the Band, although they don't try to evoke mythic Americana.

There are some appealing country-rock ballads here, but the album really catches fire in its rock & roll. The tour de force is "Typical American Boy," a pounding, straightforward rocker with a strong tune and pungent lyrics about the sotted fate of an unmotivated middle-class loser. The music has a tensile toughness similar to the Band's minus vocal harmonies and strong gospel inflection. "I'll Be Gone," which boasts the maniacal spring of the very best rockabilly bar music, extends its jazzy feel into a wonderful bop solo by lead guitarist Barry "Byrd" Burton.

The Aces' producer/arranger and their most versatile instrumentalist, Burton shows extraordinary feeling for instrumental ideas. An autoharp on "Out of the Snow" accents its pith-to-pathos ambiguity. Burton's long guitar solo, which ends "Dancing the Night Away," sums up and then transcends the song's biting poignancy. A tiny, repeated keyboard figure in "Fool for the Woman" lends a piquant flavor and structural flow to an otherwise ordinary song. "A Little Italy Rag" slips deftly into the spaced country-swing style of Dan Hicks; its lyric is that rarity, a comic narrative that is genuinely funny. (RS 216)

STEPHEN HOLDEN