Band Old 97’s Is Going Like 60

Part of the third wave of countrified college-rock bands rising in the wake of Uncle Tupelo, Old 97’s stand right beside Whiskeytown as one of the best baby bands of the genre. At the Troubadour on Friday, the Dallas quartet rustled through the sometimes dusty sounds of country classicists the Carter Family, bluegrass great Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash and then breathed fresh life (and volume) into it all with a little punk and Pavement.

The main attraction is endlessly energetic singer-guitarist Rhett Miller, who with his long bangs and thick-rimmed glasses looked like a cross between Buddy Holly and Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus. In sharp contrast with Miller’s buoyancy were the band’s woeful tunes, mostly from its major-label debut album on Elektra, “Too Far to Care,” and almost all the sad and nearly gothic stuff of country.

Working the punched-up twang, the band delivered the catchy “Barrier Reef,” a deflated tale about an empty one-night stand, and “Wish the Worst,” a darkly comic curse on a lover who stays out all night. Sometimes the group seemed to rest so heavily on its novelty that it felt afraid to stretch. Mostly, however, the set prompted one nagging question: Why isn’t there a place on the radio dial for songs as well-wrought, timeless and modern as those of Old 97’s?