BILLBOARD, May 12, 2001

RANTING: There are days when tracing the activities of folks who make rock'n'roll can be downright exasperating. Our complaint is age-old, but it reamains as relevant as ever. How do some of the flat-out worst bands in the business get major-label deals, while true talent often has to struggle to stay alive?

Yeah, yeah...we know that there's no solid answer to such a subjective question. But it's hard not to ponder such things on an afternoon during which we've trudged through a dozen big-money releases that don't deserve a dime of marketing money -- only to discover Laying Low and Inbetween by Django & the Regulars, a project that demands the attention of anyone who wonders why rock music is so darn tedious these days.

Laying Low and Inbetween is the second full-length collection by the New York-rooted jangle-pop trio led by Django Haskins, a singer/tunesmith whose affinity for the classic recordings of Elvis Costello and Tom Petty are undeniable. However, there's nothing deriv