Calling
Old Crow Medicine Show a
bluegrass band is really a bit of a stretch, since they actually sound more like a prewar
jug and
string band filtered through
Uncle Tupelo than they do, say,
Bill Monroe, and the group's attitude and themes are all
rock & roll, which gives the band, when it's at its best, a wonderfully fresh vitality with a little bit of wounded cowboy angel pathos tossed in for good measure.
Old Crow Medicine Show's previous two albums for
Nettwerk Records, 2004's
Old Crow Medicine Show and 2006's
Big Iron World, were both produced by
Gillian Welch's creative partner,
David Rawlings, who had an instinctive feel for the group's ragged glory take on what a
string band whose members listen to
Nirvana could sound like in the 21st century. For
Old Crow Medicine Show's third
Nettwerk album,
Tennessee Pusher, they've elected to go with producer
Don Was, who, although he follows the same basic sound template as
Rawlings, manages to take the edgy energy of the band down a slight notch, which isn't a good thing at all. Not that
Tennessee Pusher is a huge fall off from
Big Iron World, it's just not a great leap forward and upward, although there are plenty of striking tracks, including the perfectly voiced
"Methamphetamine" (co-written by
Rawlings and the band's lead singer,
Ketcham Secor); the haunting and eerie
"Motel in Memphis"; and the bright, radio-ready first single,
"Caroline." The one cover here, an effective version of
Blind Alfred Reed's
"Lift Him Up," is also well worth noting. The drop in energy from
Big Iron World is so slight that most fans of the group either won't care or won't notice, but one can't help but wonder what this set of songs (and there are some really good ones here) would have sounded like with
Rawlings producing.
Old Crow Medicine Show have the musicianship, songwriting chops, and creative vision and attitude to be something really special, and truthfully, they already are, as long as they don't paint themselves into a corner. ~ Steve Leggett
