Country's altered images

Top: Drive-by Truckers, Hank III. Bottom: Friends of Dean Martinez, Neko Case

Herald ratings:
Drive-by Truckers * * * *
Hank III * * *
Friends of Dean Martinez * * * *
Neko Case * * * * *

This is not so much a consideration of alt country albums - as in alternative country - but about country music which has been altered. And sounds the better for it.

Not many bands would try a concept album dedicated to Lynyrd Skynyrd, but Drive-By Truckers - a hard-edge five-piece from Georgia - did that with Southern Rock Opera four years ago and pulled it off with such rebel-rock style that it confirmed their place as one of the great rock outfits from below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Over a decade and six albums the Truckers have carved out a broad niche of gutsy, booze'n'bluesy country rock which has heart and soul, and isn't short on brains or ambition either.

By the Truckers' standards, A Blessing And A Curse is an almost conventional album - they have favoured Big Ideas in the past but this is simply a collection of 11 memorable songs - and for those new to them, reference points are the Long Ryders, the Replacements, the bloozy Faces and Georgia Satellites, plus the brittle Posies-like power-pop of Easy on Yourself alongside melancholy country ballads.

The Truckers are unashamedly a guitar band - a three-pronged attack, in fact - and there are certainly air-punching moments throughout. But with their cigarettes'n'alcohol tales of tortured love and some ennui about the rock'n'roll lifestyle (Goodbye, the title track) it has hard-won depth. Another winner from a bruised band which can convincingly deliver lines like, "When it all comes down, there'll be nothing left to catch you but ground".

Hank Williams III knows better than most about hitting ground. His grandfather was the legendary country star who died in the back of his Cadillac from a combination of morphine and whiskey, and his heavily addicted dad literally fell off a mountain while wired.

Li'l Hank III was either going to become an accountant or a punk rocker. He chose the latter, and his albums have been an uncompromising amalgam of punk, rockabilly, honky tonk and twang.

While the lyrical content of weed, speed, booze and someone else's woman remain constant, with Straight to Hell he has taken fellow travellers on fiddle, banjo, upright bass, pedal steel, and so on into a room and raced through some self-mythologising (Pills I Took, My Drinkin' Problem, Thrown Out of the Bar) but kept close to the heart of traditional country.

He pays tribute to his rebel influences (Country Heroes namechecks outsiders like George Jones, Waylon, and others) which also betrays his deep feeling for country music behind the outlaw image.

The lyrics may be X-rated - his Dick in Dixie is a terrific swipe at pop country and Hat Acts - but this Hank is the real thing. This could appeal to listeners of more traditional country, but those who prefer his out-there persona might put on the headphones and go straight to the second disc. It starts as an acoustic prison ballad then becomes a weirdly disconcerting 40-minute psychedelic soundscape of disembodied voices, gunshots, fiery preachin' and song snippets. Straight to Hell indeed.

Friends of Dean Martinez - a loose aggregation of instrumentalists which includes various former and occasional members of Giant Sand and Calexico - know what it means to create trippy soundscapes, too. Their Random Harvest may seem to have more in common with early 70s psychedelica but you quickly realise what they provide is an alt country soundtrack to strange days and long evenings in the deserts of New Mexico or Arizona.

Random Harvest conjures up dust devils and tumbleweeds, a night scene from a Sergio Leone western, a drive through high-altitude, barren desert landscapes, and watching a sunset from a mesa. All to the accompaniment of keening guitars, a tinkle of Spanish acoustic, great swathes of organs and the odd string sound.

Long passages come off like the soundtrack to Cormac McCarthy's recent noir-novel No Country For Old Men, when the drugs and despair have kicked in and the nights are long and shapeless.

This is sometimes uneasy listening, sometimes beautiful, and it takes you past the outskirts of some dusty Hispanic town into the dark lands.

Various members of Giant Sand and Calexico - notably Howie Gelb of the former, and Joey Burns and John Convertino from the latter - also turn up on Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

Case, who grew up on punk, grunge, pop, country and gospel in equal measure, defies easy categorisation, but this stunning album fits somewhere on the spectrum of altered country/alt country, particularly for the settings provided by musicians who include the Band's keyboardist Garth Hudson.

Case can deliver in a pure, almost spiritually imbued and classic country voice (the gospel-inspired John Saw That Number) but can also turn to twanging pop (Hold On Hold On), classic soulful pop (That Teenage Feeling), eerie atmospherics (the metaphorical title track) and sky-reaching balladry (Maybe Sparrow).

Lord knows what she is singing about - oblique but evocative poetics abound - but that only adds to the attraction.

If country is white people's soul music, then Neko Case is country, albeit altered.