Like jazz, recorded bluegrass operates at a presumed level of technical competence. Because it requires a high degree of skill, any album you make not intended solely for your own listening has to appeal to an audience that demands playing excellence. I've been paying heed to the genre for most of my -- and its -- existence. In that time, listening and reading about it have led me to the conviction that however well the music is performed, too many bluegrass songs are there only to provide a framework for the singing and the picking. They seem, in other words, a secondary consideration, and a good number amount to lazily tossed-together cliches of love gone wrong or right, affirmations of evangelical faith, memories of the old home place and a few more stock-worn themes. The sort of stuff somebody raised in bluegrass could write in his or her sleep, in other words. The melodies aren't much, either.

Not that there are no outstanding songs and songwriters within the style, naturally, though at times I have wondered if the foundational bands -- Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanleys -- aren't responsible for half of them, which is a foolish idea, perhaps, though one that at one time or another may pass the mind of someone who's spent enough time paying attention to bluegrass basics. Then again, according to Sturgeon's Law, 95 percent of anything is crap, which is as close as I can get to putting mediocre bluegrass songwriting into some perspective. However you look at it, though, a relative minority of composers seem concerned about writing solid, distinctive songs. Or, if they themselves aren't interested in writing them, at least finding them.

Barry Abernathy & Friends' new self-titled disc and Sturgill Simpson's Cuttin' Grass, Vol. 1 remind us of what a pleasure first-order bluegrass combined with strong material can be. A Georgia-born banjo picker and veteran of Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, IIIrd Time Out, the bluegrass-turned pop-rock Mountain Heart and (with Darrell Webb) Appalachian Road Show, Abernathy writes none of the songs here but proves his good taste and interpretative talents in an 11-cut line-up that accommodates, to this listener's blissful surprise, two each by alt.country artist Julie Miller and the less known but no less gifted folksinger-songwriter Malcolm Holcombe. Simpson is best known to those who follow country music that isn't played on country radio; he's won a critical and cult following with an approach that you might say reimagines the genre as a form of hard rock, sometimes even psychedelically so. Here, however, he's hired some of the leading lights on the current bluegrass scene (e.g., Scott Vestal, Sierra Hull, Tim O'Brien and others) and cut a generous 20 numbers, all but one an original.

Abernathy and associates put down a big sound. If these were electric instruments, they'd produce rock. Yet they never step outside the bluegrass tradition; their modernized approach comes from a deep place. The "friends" are respected genre veterans including Sam Bush, Doyle Lawson, Bryan Sutton, Rob Ickes and Ron Stewart (who handles banjo duties in lieu of Abernathy). Abernathy is responsible for the lead vocals which, though not emitting a high lonesome tenor, feel tough and perfectly suited to the material.

One has the impression that his listening is wider than the usual, which at least until recently included a certain inexplicable disdain by his younger colleagues for the oldtime mountain music from which bluegrass evolved (with Bill Monroe's assistance). Just the inclusion of three traditional songs ("Birmingham Jail," "Short Life of Trouble," "Lost John") alone would have won my heart. As with everything else, Abernathy adapts them to his own sound, even altering the melody to the first of them, which also serves as the opening cut. (For a more familiar version done bluegrass style, you'll have to seek out Del McCoury's reading on one of his early Rebel albums.) The closing number, "Lost John," an adrenalin-driven celebration of a fleeing prisoner, is introduced via tinkling clawhammer, honoring Cousin Emmy's memorable rendition, before racing off into the 21st century. "Unwanted Love" and "They Tell Me" are all you'd want in bluegrass heart songs. Paul Kennerley's "A Train Robbery" unsentimentally retells the James Gang's assault on the Chicago & Alton train at Glendale, Missouri, one legendary night in October 1879.

Sturgill boasts a pure country tenor that lends itself readily to hardcore bluegrass. It's put to superb use on Cuttin' Grass. So far, while I've respected what he's doing, I haven't followed his career more than casually, but I may have to change that. The album feels at once intensely faithful to the bluegrass ideal and also uniquely to Sturgill's strengths. One part of that is his ear for melody. These are not picking exercises but moods and emotions that swim in a musical universe, where tune and thought are more than usually entwined and no note is wasted. Not everything is gloomy, but enough of that has taken up residence here to keep you from being able to relegate it to background sound. In somebody's imagination it could be -- to quote Sturgill, who conjures up a Nashville producer's complaint -- that it is "too sincere." I guess that's why my tastes don't run in the mainstream. I've never understood the appeal of songs that aren't sincere in some sense. Sturgill and I must be kindred souls.

There's a whole lot of good stuff here. A few random examples: "Life of Sin" is what Hank Williams could have written if he'd been born a few decades later and been able to dissociate reckless behavior from incessant guilt. "Old King Coal" excoriates an industry's exploitation of Appalachia's people and landscape, maybe the best of its kind since Billy Edd Wheeler's "Coal Tattoo" more than half a century ago.

On the other hand, nobody has tried to write a bluegrass song titled "Turtles All the Way Down." Nor (as in "Just Let Go") has one ever started a song with the sentiment "I woke up today and decided to kill my ego," which admittedly isn't as odd as waking with bullfrogs on your mind (as Mississippi bluesman William Harris reported in his 1928 "Bullfrog Blues") but arguably in the same spirit. The single non-original is the late Buford Abner's truckers' anthem "Long White Line," which Simpson has rescued from obscurity twice, first as country, now as bluegrass. And if he covers it again even if he has to drop acid to do it, that one will be just as welcome in these quarters. If not the only neglected hillbilly masterpiece, it's definitely one of them.

Only in my most morbid moments do I sink to such despair as to contemplate removing current bluegrass from my life. Something always comes along to rescue me from such folly. Thanks to Abernathy and Sturgill for doing it this time. If you need your bluegrass batteries recharged, they offer their services.