By all rights, when a critical assessment of this musical decade is made, the influence of country on its more popular cousin, rock, will have to be reckoned with. Sure, country- rock rambled about long before the '90s first messed its pants, and certainly the Eagles enjoyed more fame and amassed a greater fortune than any of their '90s counterparts.

However, the vigor and sincerity with which this decade's cowpoke rockers mined rock's agrarian roots have paved a larger and more permanent inroad on our cultural landscape than any of country rock's forebears managed. But while innovators like Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks left their mark, the small movement they spawned would always remain a half length from monumental greatness, hamstrung by its incessant and narrow gaze toward the past. These days, there are still plenty of alt-country albums at your local record store, but the great ones are few and far between. Most content themselves with a comfortable pleasantness, for reasons presented as if for study on Freakwater's latest release, End Time.

Before Bob Dylan hit the scene in the early '60s, authenticity mattered little to popular music and its consumers. It wasn't because music fans were satisfied by counterfeits, but rather because, amongst a dense forest of three- minute songs about drag racing, it was of little consequence whether a singer actually felt what they sang. Keepin' it real, despite it's location centered in the heart of the country movement, is still a relative newcomer to the music world.

To both its credit and its detriment, the alt-country genre finds value in retaining the intangible "feeling" of the tradition it so zealously pursues. Here, Freakwater is a perfect example. Nearly flawlessly capturing both the sound and mood of traditional folk country, with its usually pessimistic characters, dobros and mandolins, the band successfully brings to life a collection of songs on End Time that could just as easily have been written two or three decades ago. And though Freakwater chooses a higher ground than country's usual trailer park cliché, and aspires musically to a tradition higher than the consistent drivel turned out in Nashville, the music here is country in the raw, Appalachian sense.

While the band often finds success on this extremely listenable album (the opening track "Good for Nothing" is the shiniest gem of the bunch), Freakwater, in tune with the alt-country masses, offers nothing new here. In perfecting the authenticity of the album, they've succeeded in taking the music backward, but have failed to move it forward. The future may find Freakwater in more applicable form, but on End Time, they have little more to offer than a pleasant ride through America's backwoods.

-Neil Lieberman