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The Flyer's music writers tell you where you can go.

Lately, I can't swing a whiskey bottle around here without knocking a big stack of neo-country CDs on the floor. The best resemble Hank, while the worst settle for the Eagles, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart or, frankly, to care. And then there's the Waco Brothers, the part-time brainchild of Jon Langford of the Mekons, which also includes Mekon-alum Steve Goulding, Jesus Jones' Alan Doughty, and Mark Durante of KMFDM. The cover art on their latest record, Do You Think About Me?, suggests the label "militant honkytonk," and it fits. The Brothers inject some much-needed raucousness into so-called "insurgent country" by putting the punk back in cowpunk and tossing in a little Pogue-ish U.K. grit for good measure. In other words, they're a perfect bar band, pumping out a sort of bi-continental world music for drunks. Leave it to those Brits.

Anyway, it might not be scary exactly; but festive, it is. If that's what you're up for, you can swing your whiskey bottle into the Young Avenue Deli Halloween night. -- Jim Hanas

You know -- and I don't say this very often -- Jim's right.

Ever since the much-rumored death of alternative, some of those on music's cutting edge have been listening way into the past -- to rockabilly, country, jazz, and the blues -- for a new sound. But true to the market-saturation tendencies of the music industry, that's meant we've been inundated with a bunch of twangy sound-alikes.

One pleasant side effect of the roots-music vogue, however, is that it has let a few artists plugging away on the genre fringes shine through, bands like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Austin's Asylum Street Spankers. A band that forages for inspiration in Tin Pan Alley, the Mississippi Delta, ragtime brothels, and jug-band-filled Beale Street, the Spankers (or, I guess, ASS, for short) will be at Newbys this Saturday opening for another retro outfit, the always-rocking Jason & the Scorchers.

Unlike most roots pretenders, the Spankers have no ambition to become the next huge stadium band. For one thing, they couldn't make the required noise; their one artistic conceit is a insistence on playing completely acoustic -- no amps, no microphones, no speakers, nothing. (Fortunately, they're not complete luddites; they have managed to warm up to mikes enough to produce two fun, make-you-dance CDs: 1996's Spanks For The Memories and an eponymous live disc.) But while they're probably best seen in a small, intimate venue like the Map Room or the Center for Southern Folklore, their considerable, bluesy charm should be capable of soaring over the din at Newbys. -- Mark Jordan