As Jackson Browne's longtime accompanist and studio sideman for a host of West Coast wailers, David Lindley played the string man who could make the music sound sensitive. But on Win This Record, his second solo LP, Lindley and his group, El Ravo-X, sound like a professional garage band out to have some instant fun. Stacking harmonies like cases of beer, they use Etta James' "Something's Got a...

Here's another impressive set from the Los Angeles session veteran and stringed-instrument master. David Lindley is a self-proclaimed rock & roll eccentric, and on his previous albums with his loose aggregation El Rayo-X (named after a particularly ferocious Mexican boxer, he claims), he covered a host of rock classics and semiclassics in a reckless ska style. Lindley showed that like his occasion...

On paper, it sounds like an album you'd love to hate: former folkie, once a rock & roller with Kaleidoscope, now revered Los Angeles sessionman joins third-world bandwagon with solo record of reggae and Mexican stylings. Instead, El Rayo-X is as bright and out of the blue as its title–which, in David Lindley's translation, is sort of a cross between X-ray vision and the mark of Zorro. But...