BRIAN SETZER AND THE RADIATION RANCH - BEACON THEATRE - APRIL 1986 - PHOTO PASS.

The Knife Feels Like Justice is the debut album by Brian Setzer, released in 1986 on the EMI America record label. Setzer was moving on from the rockabilly music of his prior band, Stray Cats, to a more adult-oriented roots rock sound, in the style of one of his major influences, John Cougar Mellencamp.

BRIAN SETZER, who led the rockabilly-styled Stray Cats until 1984, is now trying to leap from the 1950's to the 1970's. At the Beacon Theater on Friday, leading the five-man band Radiation Ranch, Mr. Setzer introduced his latest material - earnest tales of outcasts and romantic losers, with folk-rock guitar lines.

Those songs made for an uneasy mix with straightforwardly exuberant Stray Cats songs. They sound like early Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, often suggesting a verse by one and a chorus by the other. And while some songs have pointed, intelligent lyrics, others slip into pomposity; there's no irony intended in such titles as ''Boulevard of Broken Dreams'' or ''Haunted River.''

Radiation Ranch punched out the songs ably, and struck sparks with guitar duels on ''Rock This Town'' and the new ''Barbwire Fence'' by Mr. Setzer and the guitarist Tommy Byrnes. But at the moment, only such uptempo songs as ''Radiation Ranch'' (modeled after Bob Dylan's ''Subterranean Homesick Blues'') and ''Barbwire Fence'' seem more rambunctious than derivative.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds, a blues-rock band from Austin, Tex., shared Friday's bill. After years of diligent touring and recording, the group is now enjoying its greatest popularity with the album ''Tuff Enuff.''