Smart, hardnose Dixie bar band tussles midlife to a draw.Vulture Whale are proud, gritty Southern boys from Birmingham, Alabama, but unlike their redneck brethren Kings of Leon and Drive-By Truckers, they don’t sell themselves on backwoods mythos or yowl about their one-eyed Civil War great-granddaddy. They’re just unassuming lunks who know how to stir up a bracing, humid, two-guitar racket with a pinch of bluesy ass-shake and plenty of peaty prettiness. On this self-released second disc, singer Wes McDonald offers a down-home spin on a swaggering Mick Jagger accent, but he’s too laid back to get jerky with the women that run him ragged (even the one that’s “somethin’ of a fucker of the mind”). All he needs is a pack of smokes, his trusty van and a bar in which to unfurl his worries, ideally in a Nowheresville like “Cleveland, Alabama,” population 1,388.

DOWNLOAD “Tote It to Cleveland, Alabama,” “The Waves”