Old Southern Moonshine Revival at Evening Muse tonight (7/14/2012)

OLD SOUTHERN MOONSHINE REVIVAL Old Southern Moonshine Revival is pop-country and nothing but, yet there’s not all that much Nashville to the band’s sound. It’s like the difference between Rascal Flatts’ inhumanly slick cover of “Life is a Highway” and the dusty jangle of Tom Cochrane’s original. While each version was a massive hit in its time, there’s more dignity — and longevity — in the second approach. And like Cochrane — as well as other early-’90s rock-country hybrids — Old Southern Moonshine Revival’s instrumentation is spacious and welcoming, an appropriate complement for alternatingly bittersweet and celebratory explorations of southern life. Though lyrical clichés may be endemic to pop-country — okay, so they are — they don’t seem so bad in the hands of a capable band. $8. 10:30 p.m. The Evening Muse.

This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2012.