The sound effects and distortion that overtake "Ten Little Kids," the final track on Tomorrow the Green Grass, represent more than sonic dissonance. They express the conflict that arises when you're a band with pretty country-rock songs on a label that has made its name with the likes of Slayer and Danzig. While the avant-garde pose may have felt liberating for these Minnesotans, let's just say it's a good thing that the rest of their fourth album keeps it together with impressive ensemble playing and straightforward harmonies and hooks.

In fact, the ballads on Tomorrow are most appealing. Though neither of the band's two singer-guitarists, Mark Olson and Gary Louris, possesses a voice as nuanced as Gram Parsons', each captures the forlorn, wistful feeling that Parsons brought to his best work with the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers. "Two Hearts" and "Over My Shoulder" both exhibit economical yet emotional songwriting.

As for the rest, it's mostly midtempos bristling with crisp guitars and harmonies stacked on top of harmonies, with enough of a relaxed feel to suggest a well-oiled bar band whose members keep pictures of home in their pockets to remind them of what's truly important. The songs veer from seductively remorseful (the first single, "Blue") to idiosyncratically poignant ("Miss Williams Guitar," a nod to Mark Olson's wife, singer/songwriter Victoria Williams) to small-town charming ("Red's Song").

Only occasionally do the songs and playing on Tomorrow lapse into sterile folk-rock banality. But there's always a riff or two that suggest that someone in the band has one hell of a record collection. That's fitting, since the Jayhawks reflect rock's past much more than its future. They're not backward looking, though – they just like their music simple and direct. And fortunately, that never goes out of style. (RS 703)

ROB O'CONNOR