Mellow ‘4 Aces’: Less Than Winning Hand : Texas Tornados “4 Aces” Reprise (** 1/2)

Listening to this pleasant but pervasively mellow return of border music’s leading supergroup, one wants to point to prime mover Doug Sahm and toss a paraphrasing of one of the Tornados’ best-known refrains back at him: “Hey baby, que paso? Thought you used to be a rocker.”

Sahm, the member of the foursome best equipped to put a charge into the proceedings, lays back with likable but low-voltage hangdog cracker-barrel philosophizing of such numbers as “Little Bit Is Better Than Nada” and “Ta Bueno Compadre (It’s OK Friend).”

Only on the coda of the title track, Sahm’s otherwise muddled attempt to weave a tall tale around the band’s four personalities, do we get some of the psychedelic cowboy moves of his old Sir Douglas Quintet days--albeit borrowed from the spacey 12-string guitar break of the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.”

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Otherwise, the first Tornados album since 1992 gives us such familiar pleasures as Flaco Jimenez’s reliably sweet and sprightly accordion applied to sentimental ballads and bouncy Mexican polkas, and Augie Meyers’ beeping Vox organ and dusty, deadpan vocal on “Rosalita,” a humorous tale of the clash between a carnally motivated suitor and his sweetheart’s steadfastly traditional Mexican family.

The trump card among all these aces is Freddy Fender, balladeer extraordinaire, whose reedy, fluttering delivery is one of a kind. Fender is perfect in a low-keyed performance as the suffering barrio Everyhombre of “The Gardens,” a devastatingly intimate look at the toll of gang violence. This slowed-down version of the anthem by Orange County’s own roots-music ace, Chris Gaffney, gives “4 Aces” some needed thematic ballast. Guest guitarist Ry Cooder could have lent the gently wafting track some helpful bite but is underfeatured.

*

The album’s high mark, from Fender again, is “The One I Love the Most,” a crying country ballad in which he manages to call forth echoes of George Jones and Otis Redding, while never sounding less than fully himself.

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Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with *** denoting a solid recommendation.

* Texas Tornados, the Kari Gaffney Band and Anthony Rivera play tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $26.50-$28.50. (714) 957-0600.