** The Hot Club of Cowtown

TALL TALES

(Hightone)

This fiddle/guitar/upright bass trio from Austin embrace Western swing and the swinging small-group jazz of the Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grappelli Hot Club of France band. Their lyrics take a sprightly tongue-in-cheek slant, and the playing's always peppery -- whether they're gliding through romantic numbers like "Always and Always" or stepping lively to "Wildcat," their version of one of the famed 1930s duets from guitarist Eddie Lang and violinist Joe Venuti. Elana Fremerman's sweet, long fiddle lines are especially charming. Really, it's all entertaining. Yet the Hot Club of Cowtown seem so enamored of their influences that they bring little of their own to the game -- not even a better-than-just-adequate vocalist, though all three members sing. With nothing to distinguish their efforts, they're merely a signpost for the music's richer past.

-- Ted Drozdowski