*** The Backsliders

SOUTHERN LINES

(Mammoth)

It's hard to capture a guy like Backsliders frontman Chip Robinson on record. Unselfconsciously flailing in cowboy boots and long, stringy hair, he's as likely to dance on the tops of tables as he is to pass out drunk underneath them. But a performer who goes through that many ups and downs in a night is also capable of conveying a broad range of emotion, which Robinson does in a voice that echoes a slightly-closer-to-the-Mason-Dixon-line Levon Helm. Whether upright or horizontal, Robinson has led this Chapel Hill roots-rock contingent through various incarnations since 1991. Under the guidance of former Del Lords guitarist and ubiquitous roots-rock producer Eric "Roscoe" Ambel, the Backsliders' second full-length dispenses with the band's "hardcore honky-tonk" in favor of the more jangly sound that grew out of the South in the '80s. Not that Southern Lines doesn't rock and twang; "Never Be Your Darling" chugs like an Exile on Main Street outtake, and pedal steel whines gently in the background of "Cross Your Heart" and "The Lonely One." But Ambel also turns Robinson loose on quiet, ghostly ballads, revealing that the singer's roots indeed run in many different directions.

-- Meredith Ochs