A Twangy Alternative to Nashville’s Ghosts

As Nirvana was, on one level, the noisy answer to the FM polish of Bon Jovi-like rockers, so a new movement of young musicians has dismissed Nashville’s buffed and manicured country sounds and reclaimed its roots with gusto.

No Depression--a magazine that follows the movement variously described as alternative country, Americana, twangcore and even “y’all-ternative”--has put four of these country mavericks together on a tour that made a stop Saturday night at Jacks Sugar Shack. (The same bill returns to Jacks tonight.)

Hazeldine, a mostly female quartet from New Mexico, kicked off things Saturday with a set of dreamy guitar-driven ballads. The Picketts, an improbably countrified Seattle band, delivered a winning performance that mixed country jangle with early Beatles-style songwriting craft. They even managed to turn Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice” and the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” into affecting country-tinged laments.

North Carolina’s Whiskeytown had the hardest-rocking edge of the evening. But while their Tom Petty-cum-Eagles originals were lively, they were also entirely predictable, and the cranked guitars gave the band’s fiddler and a guest pedal steel player no chance to shine.

The real promise for the alternative country scene is carried by bands like headliners Old 97’s. Nearly every one of the Texas quartet’s songs was an exceptional blast of manic twang and inspired tunefulness. Excitable frontman Rhett Miller poured heart into his vocals and displayed a gift for wickedly witty turns of phrase in his lyrics.

Exene Cervenkova joined the band at the end for a spirited rip at X’s “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes.” It didn’t, however, qualify as best cover of the night; a band that can rock the dickens out of a Bing Crosby hit from the ‘40s, “You Belong to My Heart,” is a band that deserves to be heard.

* Whiskeytown, Old 97’s, the Picketts and Hazeldine play tonight at Jacks Sugar Shack, 1707 N. Vine St., 9:30 p.m. $8. (213) 466-7005.