In 1993, when they named themselves for a country ballad that commemorates a 1903 train wreck, bands like Old 97’s were a dime a dozen: young dudes in thrift-store cowboy shirts who took the ’60s hard country of Merle Haggard, added punk rock ass-whoop and sounded excellent, as long as you were in a bar, drunk. But what made this Dallas quartet maybe the greatest alt-country band, genre gods Uncle Tupelo included, is the tension between a love of perfectly turned British Invasion pop and the urge to spike it with whiskey and trucker speed. This dynamic produced too many great songs to fit on one CD (see Alive & Wired for a scruffier best-of). But the boozy raveups and pop poetics on display here are full of sugary self-loathing, heartbroken wit and enough melodic woo to captivate even twang-phobes.

Download: “Murder (or a Heart Attack),” “Question,” “Four Leaf Clover”