Longing for That Country Sound

Pointing out just how far Nashville’s brand of slick country music has strayed from its origins, a pair of country-oriented acts performing at the Troubadour on Thursday offered authentic-sounding alternatives straight out of . . . Chicago?

Happily doing it the new old-fashioned way, Mekons singer Sally Timms sang cowboy songs and the band Freakwater performed its early country-influenced tunes on a bill that also included the acid-damaged roots-flavored weirdness of Tucson’s Giant Sand.

Timms said she had a cold, but the U.K. native’s voice still sweetly captured the beautiful-yet-sad “high lonesome” feeling in tunes from her retro-sounding album “Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments . . . for Lost Buckaroos.”

Although she casually joked between numbers during her 35-minute set, Timms easily slipped into the music’s mournful, yearning mood. Backed by a duo playing guitar, lap steel, banjo and mandolin, she stood singing at times semi-transfixed, eyes closed as she filled the room with the glow of sweet sorrow. Delicious misery also was the theme of Freakwater’s hour-plus set. Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Ann Irwin played guitars and harmonized in the pre-rock country style of the Carter Family, sounding less otherworldly than their new album, “End Time,” if no less torn up. With a trio of backing musicians, the pair crafted a longing, folkish, at times almost pop sound that at its most modern recalled Gram Parsons or Emmylou Harris. As haunting and pretty as the performance was, however, there was a sameness to the music, the mood and the lilt of the women’s voices that ultimately became a bit of a drag.