**1/2 Old 97's

TOO FAR TO CARE

(Elektra)

Barreling out of the speakers like a freight train with the guys from Social Distortion shoveling coal into its guts, the major-label debut from Dallas's Old 97's builds a snorting head of steam that rarely lets up. The careering opener, "Timebomb," kicks up dust with singer Rhett Miller's dawg-in-heat testimony about having it "bad for a stick-legged girl." And cowpunk numbers like "Big Brown Eyes" and "Broadway" are shrewd enough to have come out of the Cracker songbook.

The real beauty of this set, though, is the gorgeously plaintive "Salome." More than any other tune, it suggests what Old 97's might accomplish if they stopped stompin' so hard all the time. Which is the only thing that mars this otherwise promising debut. Any band who name themselves after an old Johnny Cash song get points right off the bat, but Old 97s' over-reliance on gallopy twang starts to sound myopic by the end of a disc peppered with keepers that would be perfect for a back-porch hootenanny.

-- Jonathan Perry

(Old 97's headline T.T. the Bear's Place this Friday, October 17. Call 492-BEAR.)