Barely into the second track of Fight Songs the Old 97's, who've made cantankerous sore-heartedness a virtue, sound harmonically mellow and sweet. "Lonely Holiday," on first pass, is edgeless, but then you get "19" and yet more polished eschewal of this old band's incisive penchant. Does it bring Fight Songs down? A bit, but clean production aside, the Old 97's show tremendous growth from the scrappy twang of Wreck Your Life and even Too Far to Care. These are pop tunes, no doubt, and the twang might be somewhat eclipsed in spots. Guitarist and singer Rhett Miller's hardly budged an inch on his confessional pissing and moaning, still keeping it clear that he's bent out of shape. And the band's decided to trim its instrumental colors in the production process, which leads to a vaguely compressed feel in the guitars and an even more up-front occasion for Miller to sound off. -Andrew Bartlett.

If Chris Isaak comes at the Roy Orbison-Ricky Nelson tradition of three-minute country-pop operettas from the pop side, the Mavericks' Raul Malo approaches from the country perspective. Malo's dreamy, creamy tenor is every bit as intoxicating as Isaak's, and his emotional range is much broader. On this, the Mavericks' fourth album, Malo and his three bandmates demonstrate their complete mastery of this territory with its heavily echoed vocals, its low-pitched guitar figures, its chunky backbeat, and its claustrophobic sense of romance that is almost right but not quite. Bassist Robert Reynolds's wife Trisha Yearwood sings a duet with Malo on Nancy Sinatra's "Something Stupid", but the album's highlights are the four songs Malo co-wrote with former NRBQ guitarist Al Anderson, including a Tex-Mex rave-up juiced by accordion legend Flaco Jimenez. -Geoffrey Himes.

This is in some respects a curious reissue. The 1982 mini-album Green on Red was Green on Red's debut; the 1985 album Gas Food Lodging was Green on Red's third release. Quite why the intervening album, 1983's Gravity Talks has not been deemed worthy of rerelease is anyone's guess (it sounded fine at the time, and indeed it does now). That exceedingly minor quibble aside, this pairing should be welcomed by anyone whose tastes tend toward rock & roll at its most elemental Green on Red were a great group, sonic and spiritual inheritors of the template sketched by Neil Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and these two albums still sound remarkably fresh. When Green on Red was released in 1982, the originally Arizona-based band were bracketed with the Paisley Underground clique (Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, the Bangles) then emergent in Los Angeles. Green on Red were always a little wilder, however, on stage, on record and in day-to-day life. Though cheaply done, Green on Red is a singular debut. By the time Gas Food Lodging was recorded, Green on Red had been joined by guitarist Chuck Prophet IV, whose virtuosity anchored the group with glorious tracks such as "That's What Dreams Were Made For" and "Hair of the Dog" are rock & roll at its most gratifyingly scabrous. -Andrew Mueller.

Before Anodyne, Uncle Tupelo already had one masterpiece in 1991's noisy and tense Still Feel Gone, but this album, the band's major-label debut, had even grander ambitions. Replacing the group's grungy guitar with soaring lap and pedal-steel fills, plus fiddle and mandolin breaks both sweet and raucous, Anodyne is overflowing with a spacious grandeur that alludes to, and then makes it own, everything from the Band and the Stones and Neil Young (both as a solo artist and with Crazy Horse) to old Acuff-Rose songs-all of which is just to say that it's among the best roots-rock records ever made. -David Cantwell.

One of the more creative, successful tribute albums, A Vision Shared was originally released to coincide with a PBS program that premiered in 1988. Packing some serious heavyweights onto one CD, the record features covers of Guthrie and Leadbelly tunes by, among others, Little Richard, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and U2. The 14 tracks consist of mostly well known tunes, and it's fascinating to hear what the artists have done to them. Particularly exciting is a supercharged version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line" by Little Richard with Fishbone and U2's take on Guthrie's "Jesus Christ. " -Ian Landau.