**1/2 The Derailers

REVERB DELUXE

(Watermelon/Sire)

This Austin-based foursome come from the neo-trad retro school of honky-tonking that's been cutting against the slick grain of Nashville country for the past few years. Think BR5-49, or if you haven't heard their liquor- and love-song-fueled BR5-49 debut, think back to the Bakersfield barroom bluster of Buck Owens, who's probably the biggest Hee-Haw-ing influence on the Derailers. In other words, these guys are more likely to remind roots folks of LA's roots-and-rockabilly-slinging Blasters, whose Dave Alvin produced Reverb Deluxe, than the Eagles-derived Americana schmaltz of Garth, Clint, and Brooks & Dunn.

Which isn't a bad thing, especially when it means dusting off such forgotten gems as Harlan Howard's Texas-swing number "I Don't Believe I'll Fall in Love Today" and the Lefty Frizzell standard "No One To Talk to But the Blues." But the standard shuffle-and-twang formula the Derailers employ gets a little too unabashedly hoky and, well, formulaic by the end of Reverb Deluxe, which is why the hidden track, a countrified romp though Prince's "Raspberry Beret," ends up being the disc's most memorable tune.

-- Matt Ashare