Anyone who digs the Byrds, Gram Parsons and Goldrush-era Neil Young will find a lot to like about the Minneapolis country-rock outfit the Jayhawks. Replete with twangy bluegrass-picking over molasses-slow tempos, gentle and flat Midwestern-male harmonies, and lyrics that stare hard into the depths of love, the band's second LP, Blue Earth, is, in a sense, found music. It draws its secondhand purity from the above-named sources but adds a certain serenity that can only be attributed to a more contemporary sensibility.

The Jayhawks are not old-fashioned or backward looking. This is living music: simple, reflective, sweet. Songs like "Sioux City," about alienation in a seedy small-town hotel, or the jauntier "Five Cups of Coffee" meld romanticized lyrics about loneliness with piercingly affecting melodies. On dreamier, more balladic songs like "Commonplace Streets" and "Will I Be Married," lead singer and songwriter Mark Olson and crack lead guitarist Gary Louris get beautiful harmonies going. The result is music as delicate and evocative as the first whiff of wild-flowers when winter is ending.

The Jayhawks' music is free of the various trends that have swept the music scene via college radio in the past decade. There's nary a jangle or a drone to be heard, and the Jayhawks could hardly be lumped in with rockabilly or roots-rock bands. Also, the arch sophistication of new country stars like Lyle Lovett and K.D. Lang – not to mention the superpristine hick purism of Dwight Yoakam – is refreshingly absent. That's not to say the Jayhawks are the most original band to come down the pike lately. Blue Earth is a footnote in the rock & roll scheme – one well worth reading if only for its calmness and prettiness, its overwhelming charm. (RS 577)

GINA ARNOLD