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Brooks & Dunn

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"Hillbilly Deluxe." Arista Nashville. 13 tracks.

Grade: B-

Don't expect surprises from Brooks & Dunn. The perennial duo-of-the-year award-winners have spent their career making guitars crunch and twang at the same time, and they're not about to stop now. Especially since one of the hottest new duos in country, Big & Rich, have basically taken Brooks & Dunn's template and slapped on a fresh coat of paint and a few distracting modern touches. "Hillbilly Deluxe" won't convert the nonfan, but it won't disappoint the faithful, either. There's a lot of Saturday night, as in the cheerleading first single "Play Something Country" and "She Likes to Get Out of Town," which sounds like a Gretchen Wilson song in the third person. When the partying winds down, there's a little Sunday morning in the faith-professing "Believe." It's not the pair's best collection of tunes — it suffers a little in comparison to its more potent predecessor, "Red Dirt Road " — but it gets the job done.

— Shane Harrison