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O.C.M.S
(Nettwerk)
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Old Crow Medicine Show’s swaggering bluegrass and folk have earned them a shot at an Americana breakthrough by landing them spots on Conan O’Brien and at last year’s Newport Folk Festival. They play with plenty of attitude here, digging into a set split between traditional material and originals with enough energy to have earned the "punk" label they’ve been saddled with. But their hollering vocal harmonies and all-acoustic, no drums line-up put them squarely in line with bluegrass tradition, a band who wear the mantle of Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe proudly and not as a John Deere–hat affectation. They don’t sound out of place tackling old chestnuts like "C.C. Rider" and "Hard To Love," and it’s easy to picture them ripping through "Tear It Down" from a barn loft at a hootenanny. The simple, clear production by Gillian Welch collaborator David Rawlings gives them a live-in-studio sound. Yes, it’s hard to listen to a bunch of twentysomethings singing an original tune about the horrors of Vietnam, even if they do mean it as a comment on the war in Iraq. But the bottom line is, Old Crow Medicine Show have the chops and attitude to appeal to both cowpunks and purists.
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