***1/2 Shaver

ELECTRIC SHAVER

(New West)

Songwriter Billy Joe Shaver and his guitar-filleting son Eddy straddle rock and country music with arrogant, bad-ass confidence. As they should. They're offering one of the most potent combinations of lyric and instrumental muscle on the planet. And the beauty of it all is that despite the tanned-leather quality of Billy Joe's singing and the Jimmy-Page-meets-James-Burton swagger of Eddy's unremittingly brilliant and heavy playing, their songs are blatantly sentimental. The senior Shaver's always digging around in his heart for memories like the images of lost love and alcoholic excess that haunt "Thunderbird." And when he sings a line like "I'm a scarred-up old warrior who's paid all his dues," in the hopelessly devoted "Slave at the Feet of the Queen," it's not debatable. As for Eddy, he turns a mood blue with the whisper of a slide on steel strings, or chugs like a railroad engine on the ode to assholes "People and Their Problems" -- even quoting a little o' Zep's "Rock 'n' roll" at the song's tag. For wit, grit, and spirit, look no farther.

-- Ted Drozdowski