The Blasters: Hardline (Slash/Warner Bros)

THE BLASTERS FACE a perennial battle in balancing their allegiance to roots forms of American music with the ever present danger of becoming predictable purists going through the I-IV-V motions. Their first two Slash albums won the war via Dave Alvin's superior songwriting and a common denominator of relaxed yet hard-swinging grooves. Slimmed down to a quintet line-up again and shorn of R&B horn shadings, Hardline is a scattershot, inconsistent album focusing on the individual components that make up the Blasters' American music.