The Amazing Rhythm Aces became less so on last year's Too Stuffed to Jump, and while they have yet to make wholly uninteresting music, their third LP continues the down trend. It wouldn't seem so bad but for their impressive start with 1975's Stacked Deck.

The ability is still there, maybe even developing, but it's becoming shrouded and dim. The delightful subplots are disappearing from the lyrics,...

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," an intriguing mystery on Jesse Winchester's '74 album, Learn to Love It, is no longer mysterious—the song's become a well-deserved hit, as played by its originator, Tennessean Russell Smith and his band, the Amazing Rhythm Aces. While the Aces' recording of this disarming shuffle hits just the right note, the group's first album is an uneven hodgepodge replete with flat...