Waiting on Judgment Day (Shiner/Palo Duro, 2006)

With a sound heavy on electric guitar, light on Dobro and fiddle (also on drawl, yodels and references to cattle, cheatin' and George Jones), Lost Immigrants take their place, with their debut disc, on the New Texas landscape. It's a sound typified by Charlie Robison and Jack Ingram. But where Robison seems at home singing about throwing a few back and finding oneself at the wrong address when necessary, Lost Immigrants tend more toward yearning, hopeful songs about love and life choices.

With a knowing delivery by laconic lead singer James Dunning, over the moody guitar of Sean Isbel, they sound like they've been around for decades rather than a mere two years. Where do they get their chutzpah? Production by Ray Wylie Hubbard (author of "Up Against the Wall Redneck") couldn't have hurt.

The Immigrants are never more melodic and self-assured than on "Circle in My Hand," about a failed relationship that barely exists beyond the ring. And they are never further from the cowboy aesthetic than when Dunning shifts to the point of view of an abandoned female narrator (and, in the next verse, a Wall Street broker) on "Maybe December."