Trigger 5

Country music seems so simple to some: three chords, a cheatin' or beer-drinkin' rhyme or two, and vocals squeezed up into the inferior turbinates. If you think that's a caricature, then you haven't been to an open-mic night in south city recently. Trigger 5, featuring the brassy warmth of singer Amy James, isn't buying the self-parody. Even when the St. Louis septet is having fun with conventions, as on "I Fail At Everything But You," Matt Hughes' pedal steel purrs and whines, and drummer Dave Naeger keeps the ensemble lively enough for dancing. The band is currently completing its first album, based on a wrecked relationship told from two opposing points of view. But even when the bandmates are subtly spinning conventions, their chief aim is to play country music as straight and neat as they take their whiskey.