The Old 97s made their triumphant return to the 9:30 Club last night. Photo by Lisa Johnson.

Our Nation’s Capitol has seen a lot more of the emancipated Rhett Miller in recent years than it has of his band, Old 97s. Miller may write most of the songs for the hard-charging country-pop-punkabilly quartet, but somehow he’s only about one–eleventh as interesting when he doesn’t have Murry Hammond singing harmony and Ken Bethea blasting out those vibrato flurries of surf licks. The pretty boy with the eyelashes really needs his grayer, gruffer bandmates to toughen him up.

The chemistry among these four guys from Dallas has produced a power-pop/country cocktail that’s helped them remain viable even as most of their mid-90s alt-country brethren have been naturally selected or morphed into something else. Making the promotional rounds for their recent Blame It on Gravity album, Miller has even gently dissed the prior 97s outing, 2004’s Drag It Up, as having suffered from his emphasis on his solo work.