These recordings take me back to the glory days of a briefly lived genre identified then (about three decades ago) as "alt.country" -- alternative country -- not to be confused with "Americana," a nebulous, slightly backward-looking pop format that aspires, usually without visible or audible success, to rootedness. Alt.country entered my life and consciousness when I bought the first albums of Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam, though in retrospect it was clear that before them Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver were reaching for something like that, and before them Johnny Cash, Bobby Bare and Tom T. Hall. In other words, country with brains and memory, country that sought to give voice to more than a paltry handful of well-worn sentiments.

Alt.country set down its marker between honkytonk revivalism and a fusion of country, folk and neo-rockabilly, and variations thereof. It was too good to last, like some strains of popular art perhaps too smart for its own (commercial) good. Americana, which now occupies the space, is a pale shadow of its forebear. In their new recordings Bob Rea and Western Centuries remind us of what we've lost.

Most of the songs on Southbound would fit easily into unadorned acoustic arrangements, in other words into the kind of sonic environment associated with folk-based singers and singer-songwriters. (One thinks of that when one hears the quote from Ola Belle Reed's "High on the Mountain" in Rea's "Whisper of an Angel.") Rea, who updates folk with a muscular hillbilly-rock band, has been around long enough to recall what the 1960s revival sounded like and what subjects the songwriters who came out of it chose to address, which prominently included backroads, trains, rivers, rambling, and wars. Rea's vocals are compelling in a gravel-road sort of way. Neither he nor his songs take the main traveled roads.

He addresses all of the above in compelling pieces like "The Highway Never Cries" (with Erik Stucky), "Vietnam" (with Kate Graves) and "Skipping Stones," the last my favorite on the album. It is safe to say, I'm sure, that the female narrator of "Screw Cincinnati" would have used a blunter verb in a real-life rant occasioned by a belated realization she has followed a preposterous dolt all the way from Dallas to a city strange to her. It's a tough, funny song alongside which every reviewer is legally obligated to cite John Prine's sense of humor, here in evidence but hardly Prine's sole property. At the same time the album's most rock-oriented song, "Wanna Do," would do proud to the Byrds in their prime. I have always loved the Byrds.

When Songs from the Deluge showed up in my mail early this spring, I gave it a couple of quick spins before returning to a massive, headache- and exhaustion-inducing project: a fat book, now completed and destined for publication later in the summer. My initial impression was that I was hearing something sui generis. Now that I have time to listen to it, fully rested and undistracted, I hear where Western Centuries, based mostly in Seattle, comes from (and yes, it's singular, meaning we are spared the unsettling prospect that each of the five members is a Western Century). The name, though, surely starts with the title of a Western Civ textbook, which tells you right off that these guys are better read than your average honkytonker. So this is an enjoyable album and further affirms, to those of us paying attention, that Seattle's folk/country/bluegrass/oldtime scene is truly a wonder. Band member and songwriter Cahalen Morrison's acoustic albums with Eli West have been happily covered in this space.

But Songs is not sui generis, it turns out. As my ear picks up the sounds wafting out of the speakers, I recall the reception, long ago, of the Band's Music from Big Pink. In those days, the 1960s scare in recent collapse, the very concept of folk music had fallen into bad odor among ascendant rock critics, an occupation in the process of being invented. "Folk" could be brought into the discussion only in sneering contempt (thus the origin of "folkies," not meant merely descriptively). Big Pink's very title highlighted its key reference point (along with r&b) as traditional Appalachia; the title is a play on the well-known mountain folksong "Little Pink." Since the album was far too good to be trashed for its heresies, critics pretended that it arose from "country" influences. There was, in fact, no country (as in honkytonk) influence apparent anywhere. As is now recognized, the Band in its early, most honored period was the quintessential American folk-rock outfit.

On the other hand, Western Centuries is the Band with country leading its way. Actually, a song or three sound shockingly Band-like, for instance "Borrow Time" and "Time Does the Rest," both by band member Jim Miller. And beyond that, Western Century (sorry, I can't help it) Ethan Lawton contributes "Own Private Honky Tonk," which could pass as a Robbie Fulks tune. Morrison's "Warm Guns," actually an excellent number, is pure Son Volt, another Band-shaped band. I want to stress these are all fine songs, well sung and movingly arranged, which will be welcome in your life. Moreover, not everything sounds unintentionally derivative. I have the feeling, though, that Morrison had the question memorably raised in the antique Scottish "I Once Loved a Lass" ("how many strawberries grow in the salt sea?") in conscious mind as the template for the query that opens "Guns."

Or maybe I've just heard too much damn music at this stage of my life. Even so, I do like this album.