The Flatlanders

The original Flatlanders were more ghosts than legends; it’s not as if fans bump into people at Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore or Butch Hancock shows who say, “Hey, I saw the Flatlanders back in the ’60s.” As important as the group seems now, its first stint — with a grand total of one eight-track-tape release — was a disaster. That entire previous output, re-reissued in 1990 as More of a Legend Than a Band, is like film of a minor-league ballplayer: more memorable for early traces of brilliance than for the game played that afternoon.

Now Again shows that promise finally fulfilled, some thirty years later. With the exception of Utah Phillips’ “Going Away,” all of the songs here are cowritten by the big three, and this record is as full of West Texas — cotton fields, trains, lost souls, melon moons — as the first. The difference is that here, all three songwriters seem to know they’re doing this for fun. Free to be goofy, all three pass instruments and swap verses on loopy songs such as the you’re-gonna-get-it fable “Pay the Alligator.” Even when they’re selling mysterious tales with drop-dead harmonies or demonstrating how to do Texas country, as with the lush “I Thought the Wreck Was Over,” they’re relaxed. Ely, Gilmore and Hancock know what the Flatlanders meant to the world — hell, they even bring back Steve Wesson’s weird, flaky musical saw for nostalgia’s sake. But early on, the trio sings It feels so good/I might be right where I belong, and it’s obvious these veteran songwriters put this album out because they know how much the Flatlanders meant to their own careers.