**1/2 Steve Earle & the Supersuckers

STEVE EARLE & THE SUPERSUCKERS

(Drag City)

Supercharged punks the Supersuckers continue with the C&W pursuits they engaged in on the recent Must've Been High, where members of Willie Nelson's band and Dwight Yoakam's sat in. Now country bad boy Steve Earle and the Seattle quartet have gotten together to play each other's tunes for this EP. Earle's countrified version of the 'Suckers' "Creepy Jackalope Eye" shows the sturdy song structure under the original's layers of feedback. Meanwhile, the 'Suckers turn Earle's somber, banjo-laced "Angel Is the Devil," into a high-speed garage punker. There's also a take on Keith Richards's "Before They Make Me Run." For the sake of a nice compare-and-contrast instruction, the untouched Earle/Supersuckers follow the covers. In all, a nice addition to the discography of each band.

-- Ben Heller