Lost Souls' is an auspicious debut record from five seasoned players who dig for new nuances in the most established rock & roll forms. The Raindogs, led by songwriter and guitarist Mark Cutler, are a dream of a bar band, able to execute fierce three-chord rockers as well as strong, thoughtful tunes at more deliberate tempos.

The Raindogs' songs are built around Cutler's earnest tales of people in emotional and moral conflict, but the band's secret weapon is fiddler Johnny Cunningham – the member who sets the Raindogs apart from a hundred other good roots-obsessed groups. The Raindogs integrate fiddle into their arrangements with an easy assurance. This extra dimension, with its nods to both the Louisiana bayou and Celtic music, adds firepower to the band's sound and lifts straightforward midtempo rockers like "May Your Heart Keep Beating" and the overtly traditional "Under the Rainbow" to higher ground. For his part, Cunningham always subordinates his lead lines to the songs, and the Raindogs' ensemble playing brings warmth to the edgy pop of "This Is the Place" (with its wryly ambivalent key line, "This is the place I like to call home") as well as to the crafty garage blues of "I Believe."

Although the Raindogs open up their sound in a variety of ways, the tough ideas behind the songs aren't at all diffuse. What makes Lost Souls so invigorating is that it reminds you how a good record can explore musical byways and still be firmly grounded in hard, riveting, mainstream rock & roll. (RS 572)

JIMMY GUTERMAN