It's said that in Britain "folk-rock" stresses the noun on the left side of the hyphen, in America the one on the right. If the Westies, fronted by Chicago-based married couple Michael McDermott and Heather Horton, combine acoustic and electric sounds in a mix that gives the former primacy, the informed listener otherwise will not discern the direct influence of folk, as in traditional, music. What one does hear is something like Bruce Springsteen in his sparer moments, in other words most of current American folk-rock's proximate influence. I might add that pop-rocker Billy Joel's spirit beckons in "The Gang's All Here" and "Santa Fe."

Still and all, Six on the Out stands out as a fiercely attention-holding album, owing largely to McDermott's (also Springsteen-tinged) lead singing and consistently sure-handed (also Boss-esque) writing. I maintain that such borrowing is nothing to get worked up about; we ought to be used to it by now, after the voluminous output of a generation of Dylan, the Beatles and other acolytes of more celebrated artists. All that matters is that the influences have been absorbed to worthwhile effect. Here, the music never falters over its 11 cuts and nearly 60 minutes. The backing band boasts, among others, the cult singer-songwriter Will Kimbrough. It also makes effective use of guitars, mandolin, fiddle and other folkish instruments.

It's not cheerful stuff, let us be clear. The opening cut, "If I Had a Gun" as in If I had a gun / I'd blow them all to hell, snarls at the no doubt unsuspecting visitor in the voice of a dangerously bitter man only lately loosed from a prison cell. Indeed, it's not the only song from the perspective of criminals, ex-cons and men seriously down on their luck or judgment. It turns out that McDermott once served time for an unspecified offense or offenses, of which he remarks only, "It's a very odd sensation to be released and trying to to acclimate yourself back into society." That struggle is a major focus of Six. But even if you don't know that biographical detail, the album never once betrays anything less than gritty credibility, even when it encompasses the romantic harmony singing of McDermott and Horton (on the gorgeous Everlys-flavored "Like You Used To").

My all-time favorite, though, transports us from grim Windy City streets onto a Southwestern landscape of another century. "Henry McCarty" -- by most accounts William Bonney/Billy the Kid's birth name -- is an exquisitely conceived ballad hitched to a luminous melody. It is also a dead-accurate reconstruction of the Kid's brief, blood-soaked career. McDermott communicates volumes in ostensibly throw-away sentences. Of the outlaw's complex personality McDermott advances but eight words: Most say he wasn't even all that mean. And if you can say that of a killer, you're allowing as how, unlike some of his compatriots, the Kid was more an unfortunate victim of circumstance than a practicing psychopath; in other words, if you stayed on his good side, he wouldn't shoot you -- if he could help it, anyway. The Kid's leading academic biographer, Robert M. Utley, on the body count: rather than 21 men as the legend proclaims, "he alone killed four. ... He shared in the killing of six." That's still a yikes where I come from.

Another stellar number: the harrowing meditation "This I Know," where the singer imagines himself as a sailor adrift over perilous seas, all the while holding anxiously to faith in dry land and sunnier times. Of course, all of us have been in that psychic space at one time or another, and songs calling up grief and despair are hardly unheard. But "This" possesses a singular power and a unique immediacy. As with everything on the disc, it is too true to be background music.