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The hellfire imagery on the “Racin’ the Devil” cover–a skeleton in an Elvis Presley hairdo playing an upright bass while a beautiful, cigarette-smoking devil woman sits atop a crashed ’50s sedan–hints at rockabilly revolution somewhere inside this album. Instead, from the onetime Stray Cats bassist and Carl Perkins and Dave Edmunds collaborator Lee Rocker, we get competency. Rocker’s enthusiasm for the old school is infectious, and his songwriting is creative, notably the leeringly over-the-top “The Girl from Hell,” the solemn “The River Runs” and a spooky rewrite of the Cats’ 1981 smash hit “Rock This Town.” But energy doesn’t always compensate for charisma, and Rocker’s “Racin’ the Devil” ends up more like a car show than a drag race.
