The fourth long-player from South Carolina’s sole claim to rock-and-roll fame (unless you want to count the Swingin’ Medallions) should delight old Marshall Tucker fans while attracting new admirers to the group.

Boasting its most diverse and well-balanced program to date, Searchin’ for a Rainbow includes seven potent new compositions and the group’s popular “Can’t You See.”

That and several of the other songs, like much of Marshall Tucker’s previous work, seem redolent of the Allman Brothers. Overall, though, this album finds the group incorporating more of its members’ influences and defining its own terrain better than it has in the past.

Many of these new songs, for example, tell me that the band has been listening to traditional country and Chicago blues. And “Bob Away My Blues” and “Walkin’ and Talkin’,” in particular, have much more in common with honky tonk and Bob Wills’s western swing than with anything in the Allmans’ repertoire.

Throughout, the album evidences the band’s marked musical growth. And the performances, while well-disciplined and professionally honed, possess a delightful just-partying-with-the-gang flavor. Even if no new bands emerge from South Carolina for quite some time, the state seems certain to be represented in rock’s forefront for years to come.