Waco Brothers – Electric Waco Chair

The Waco Brothers love to boast of their passion for applying a metaphorical steel-toed boot to the collective posterior of contemporary country music. But their last album — WacoWorld, a clumsy clunker that tried much too hard — gave off an odor that suggested the boys had been frolicking in cowflop.

Not surprisingly, the ragtag gaggle of mostly ex-pat limey punks remains undeterred. But this time, they’ve left the highfalutin’ foofaraw to artsy types like the Mekons; Electric Waco Chair finds the gang swashbuckling back into the barroom fray, having hosed down the boots.

A pair of tunes from frontman Jon Langford holds the disc’s first half together. “Where The Mighty Fall” is the late-night, fuzz-toned confession of a compulsive carouser; “Walking On Hell’s Roof Looking At The Flowers” is a lovable “loser’s song.”

Langford’s sidekick, Dean Schlabowske, doesn’t fare quite so well. Schlabowske has a voice made for punk rock, and the middling midtempo likes of “Jamaican Radio Obituary” and “Circle Tour” don’t do him any favors.

The Wacos have always been a ferocious and thoroughly fun live act, so it’s little wonder that the disc looks up when they leave the studio behind. The three album tracks recorded live on their home turf — Schubas Tavern in Chicago — get back to the bastard brand of barroom roots-rock the Wacos perfected on their 1997 disc Do You Think About Me.

Just as that album peaked with the Wacos’ definitive demolition of the Lonesome Bob-penned title track, the high point of Electric Waco Chair is also a cover: Paul Kennerley’s “When I Get My Rewards” gets the ragged-but-right treatment, replete with tasty fiddle from ace instrumentalist John Rice.