Brooks & Dunn, ''Cowboy Town'' (Arista)

No superstar country act strikes a balance between playing on their strengths and taking new risks quite as well as Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn. ''Cowboy Town'' continues their strong, second-decade surge, as they keep rocking harder and incorporating more soul and spirituality into their songs.

On their mainstream songs, they find ways to punch up familiar territory. The title song uses a swaggering backbeat, a ringing guitar and sustained organ fills behind a lyric about the righteous toughness of men who live with pride and morality. Similarly, the album's first single, ''Proud of the House We Built,'' is a slow-building anthem about a couple who start too young but find a way to hold the course through all the challenges.

But it's in the adventurous album cuts that their on-going inspiration shows. The dark-haired Brooks stretches like never before, whether he's recalling a pungent night with Lone Star poet Jerry Jeff Walker or getting Southwest psychedelic on the dizzying ''Drop in the Bucket.'' Tall, big-voiced Dunn gets just as out of his mind on the high-speed Tex-Mex stomper, ''Tequila.''

As usual, the duo can get too silly (''Put a Girl in It'') or too philosophical (''God Must Be Busy''). But that's all part of not holding back. In a genre known for playing it safe, Brooks & Dunn show the value of careening out of control.

CHECK OUT THIS TRACK: On ''Drunk on Love,'' the duo slip into a hallucinatory groove that's the sonic equivalent of a room spinning around as Dunn narrates his way through a descriptive tale about the addictive qualities of a good relationship.

By MICHAEL McCALL For The Associated Press

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