The Wilder Blue release their fifth album Cinco

The Wilder Blue have released Cinco, their fifth full-length in six years. The title works twice over: it is album number five, and there are five of them in the band, a group that started out as Hill Country before taking a line from one of their early songs as a name.

Zane Williams sings and writes, with guitarist Paul Eason, bassist Sean Rodriguez, multi-instrumentalist Andy Rogers and drummer Lyndon Hughes behind him. They have gone from a small Texas act to opening stadium shows for Luke Combs, and the chemistry between the five is the thing every review of them ends up circling.

Where earlier records wandered into jam band passages and jazz-shaped movements, Cinco stays put. Saving Country Music's Trigger describes it as a push-play-and-let-it-roll listen built on a late-seventies mood, back when smooth country and California classic rock were close to indistinguishable.

"Sinners and Strays" opens the album and reads like a theme song. "Last Chance for Dancin'" works an eighties feel, "When He's Out of Sight" is where the five-part harmonies come out, and "Wild Western Windblown Band" rides a rolling banjo. "Only The Years" closes things quietly and gives Williams room to move.

The review is not uncritical. Its argument is that the record occasionally goes too simple in the effort not to break the mood, and it puts "Texas Women", a honky tonk turn with country singer Tracy Byrd guesting, and "Good Woman" in that column. The verdict was 8.3 out of 10.

Its high point, by that account, is "The Hunt", the fifth song, praised for a melody set off by distant steel guitar and for joining the small class of hunting songs that are about far more than hunting. Cinco is out independently rather than on a major, following the album announcement earlier this year, and it is one of the more accessible country records of the season. The release is logged on the release calendar.