Waiting 30 years to make your second record has its advantages. Attention spans being what they are, critics are unlikely to talk about a sophomore slump; a three-decade hiatus allows for a certain maturation of artistic vision; and a whole new audience has grown up to hear you as something new under the alt-country sun.

Of course, not many people heard Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock on the very first go-round in 1973, when their inaugural collaboration, The Flatlanders, was released on eight-track only. (When it appeared on CD in 1990, the expanded album was aptly renamed More a Legend than a Band.) But over the years, the individual members of this legendary Lubbock troika established respected solo careers with more (Ely) or less (Hancock) notoriety, while continuing to swap songs and occasionally share stages. Their formal reunion (complete with saw player Steve Wesson) began in '97 with a contribution to the Horse Whisperer soundtrack, gaining momentum with a couple of live appearances and a track on the Townes Van Zandt tribute album, Poet.

Boasting a rich blend of instruments (Dobro, accordion, slide guitar, fiddle) and vocal harmonies, 13 of the 14 songs on Now Again are attributed to all three members of the trio. But most bear the dominant stamp (and distinctive lead vocal) of either Ely, the hard-edged country rocker who toured with the Clash; Hancock, the Panhandle's prolific poet of epic narrative and relentless rhyme; or Gilmore, the gaunt mystic with the tenor whippoorwill voice. A few honky-tonk pieces have the carefree feel of a busman's holiday. Others, including the opening cover of Utah Phillips's "Going Away," achieve a one-of-a-kind balance of implied Eastern philosophy, evocations of west Texas weather and geography, and heartrending melancholy. Where Basho and Rumi meet Bob Wills and Bob Dylan – that's where you'll find the Flatlanders, the best country band you never heard. The Flatlanders play with Tim Easton Fri/5, Slim's, S.F. (415) 255-0333. (Derk Richardson) Scissor Sisters
Electrobix EP (A Touch of Class)

On the let's-go-disco debut of Brooklyn's Scissor Sisters, the pomo homo trio use a traditional fag-pop framework to critique gay club culture from within. Over rump-bumpin' beats that rewire the B-52's as the Pet Shop Boys, the electro-camp champs take on the body-conscious, bigger-is-better macho mentality that rules inside the gym and under the strobe light. "You gotta pump your body / If you wanna be a hottie," Jake Shears sings in his best Bee Gees-on-E mocking falsetto. "So I go to the gym almost five times a week ... and now I look like a freak."

What makes Electrobix's anthemic, '80s-obsessed title track so brilliant, though, isn't just that its way-gay subversion is sonically straightforward enough to bait the very club-hopping, pecs-flexing studmuffins it criticizes – it's also that the song manages to be neither mean-spirited nor preachy. Instead, it's so utterly infectious and humorous that it's clear the Scissor Sisters (who also include ex-Trannyshacker Ana Matronic and keyboardist-guitarist Babydaddy) empathize with the too-typical coming-out-of-age story that sees so many gay men buffing up to fit in on the dance floor. Shears has been there and done that, and he's quick to point out where it ultimately got him: "I never felt so alone."

As a sorta party starter-social commentary, then, "Electrobix" is a refreshing break from the mindless thumpa thumpa of typical nightlife, and the three hot wax trax that follow don't skimp on disco-ball bliss either. With a radio edit of the title track, the Hungry Wives' "Passive Depressive" remix – even better than the real thing! – and the postparty comedown cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," the EP is an exhilarating teaser to the full-length the group has planned for late this year. Don't worry about the wait, though, 'cause this summer Electrobix is the perfect dance-floor fix for the Scissor Sisters' meat-market targets. (Jimmy Draper)

Tim Berne
Science Friction (Screwgun)

If you said no one was recording good new jazz, the first thing I would do is give you one of Tim Berne's albums. Last year it would have been The Shell Game; a few years before that, it would have been something by his old quartet Bloodcount – probably Discretion. Today I would give you Science Friction.

Berne has been releasing consistently great records for most of his 20-year career, many on his own Screwgun label, and he keeps getting better. Listening to this one, I am once again amazed at how Berne can write such "out" music and have it sound so good, like all those tongue-twisting, atonal melodies that somehow sound catchy and the baffling, odd-timed rhythms that come out sounding perfectly natural and (dare I say it) funky.

Berne's music has been described as James Brown on a skipping turntable, but I hear more of a down-home Stax/Aretha Franklin vibe. (Berne is actually a longtime Aretha fan and, as an alto saxophonist, a stylistic acolyte of Texans Julius Hemphill and Ornette Coleman.) This bluesy R&B sensibility – along with all the noisy improv and an absence of any worn-out blues clichés – is what got me, as a Southern college kid interested in weird music, into those raw, lo-fi Bloodcount records Berne was putting out in '96 and '97.

Science Friction is not lo-fi. It's a studio recording that's produced like a rock record, in the best sense: Tom Rainey's drums are big and airy like something off a Led Zeppelin LP; Craig Taborn's keyboards are warm and bassy in all the right spots; and Marc Ducret's guitar cuts through it all with a real distorted edge (not the fake, overprocessed distortion too many jazz dorks use when they're "rockin' out"). It sounds like it was recorded next week, which is as good a description of Berne's music as I can think of at the moment. (Will York)

Electric Birds
Gradations (Mille Plateaux)

Gradations is warm and familiar, a respite from the relentless experimentation and dissonant textures usually found in minimal techno. It was created by Electric Birds, the nom de plume of Seattle-based (formerly of San Francisco) producer Mike Martinez, who also runs Deluxe Records and releases albums by Blectum from Blechdom and other electronic artists. "Gradations" accurately describes the album's nine tracks, which are crafted with layers that bustle and percolate through the melodies that gird them.

The title track, for example, opens with stray percussive noises, similar to the vibrating sounds a boiling pot of water makes, floating over a keyboard refrain that's soon paired with a bristling techno beat, forming one of the album's few dance tracks. In contrast, "Painted Rooms" begins with a thick acoustic bass line, then adds computer glitches and a melancholy piano pattern. In the space of 10 minutes "Painted Rooms" weaves itself into the consciousness as Electric Birds tweaks its tone and parts and plays with the glitches as if they were scratched out from an analog instrument. Typical, too, is "Astral Traveling," which repeats two notes over five minutes of an ever changing background of acoustic guitar and keyboard playing. Each song unfolds in an arrangement similar to both a typical DJ track that alternates melodies in a verse-chorus-verse structure and a classical piece full of movements and carefully mapped-out fugues.