There used to be something spelled "alt.country," which I loved. It stood for "alternative country," a more creative, intelligent, yet tradition-grounded iteration of the mainstream genre denoted on the right hand side of the punctuation mark. In time alt.country scattered to the winds, to be reborn, sort of, in blander guise as what some marketer thought of as "Americana." Unsentimentally defined, Americana is little more than non-hiphop pop. The definition is so expansive as to elude further meaning, except that it's still, for the moment, guitar- and melody-driven.

The best of it -- recognizable as based in older country, folk, r&b, rock and other more authentically rooted genres -- is already defined. In consequence, it is not in need of a freshly minted label. Except, as I suspect, to sell a radio format.

On the other hand, you could argue that to the extent that alt.country survives in crevices of Americana, it's there because some artists would like to explore what a natural evolution of country -- and country has been evolving ever since it first was captured on wax in the 1920s -- would have brought us to in the 21st century, if formulaic, brain-dead product of current Nashville not intruded. That share of oldtime stringband music that doesn't draw its repertoire from Appalachian ballads and tunes borrowed it from the early popular, from parlor ballads to the English music hall to novelty Jazz Age. Country was never pure, but it carried something that still feels something like authenticity.

Which gets us to Eric Brace & Last Train Home, which from its name could almost be a bluegrass band but which in fact sounds and feels more like country, sometimes countryish pop, of a variety that predates alt.country (a thing around for a few years in the 1990s), namely in the music of Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, et al., 20-25 years earlier. What I liked about these latter performers, I recognized as country; what I didn't, I recognized as in fact the same, but for the fact that their good stuff was generally better and the not so good not so bad.

Everything Will Be is the latest in a series of albums this East Nashville band has been issuing for a number of years. I wish that country music were still this: something to turn on in the car and respect; even when part of it isn't particularly to your taste, that lesser part won't outrage your taste either. Brace, who writes or co-writes the bulk of the songs, has a voice you won't mistake for any other's, and a touching and appealing one it is. Nothing here is dumb. This is song-craft of a solid, respectable order.

Brace, however, is more deeply immersed in pure pop than I am, which means only that as a general matter we probably are comfortable with dissimilar sounds in our respective ears. I go usually for the harder edge, especially when in theory the music has at least some claim to roots. I understand, of course, that "roots" has a variety of definitions. Mine in this context is a style linked at some unforbidding distance to Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Bill Monroe. Brace and gang are not that.

You enquire, perfectly correctly, So what? Then let us agree on the splendor of the Western-swinging arrangement of Johnny Mercer's comic concoction "I'm an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)." I'm sure, too, that together we can conjure up a definition of roots that covers this one, too.