Old Crow Medicine Show - Tennessee Pusher by brendan

Tennessee Pusher, the new album from acoustic string band Old Crow Medicine Show, is uncompromisingly dull. Its lyrics brim with sanctimony, its tempos are drag-footed, its instrumental performances are uninspired and its vocal takes are ... O.K., let's go ahead and call the vocals "bad." "Bad" is something, anyway; the rest of the album hardly registers.

In press materials preceding the release, producer Don Was describes Old Crow Medicine Show as "The Clash of bluegrass," a characterization that shows a misunderstanding of either The Clash and bluegrass music or of Old Crow Medicine Show. As a description of this record in particular, it's flat ironic. Tennessee Pusher drains Old Crow of everything that had set them apart from this decade's sprawl of new old-timey music acts: their chaos and irreverence, their swaggering anger and boyish sexuality, their urgency and their fun. Lemme repeat: This album is no fun. The few tunes meant to be fun, like the joylessly bawdy "Mary's Kitchen" come across as labored and perfunctory.

Was hasn't much changed the band's studio sound as established by David Rawlings, who produced their last couple of records. They still sound like a tightly gathered circle of acoustic stringed instruments and reedy, close vocal harmonies. On a few tracks, the addition of celebrity drum kit and Hammond organ (manned by well-known session player Jim Keltner and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) manage to signify Folk Rock -- you're supposed think Levon and Garth -- without much distinguishing these tunes from any other on the record.

What's different here is the mood, the best word for which I can think of is "deflated." I imagine that the slower tempos, the cringingly earnest topical lyrics, are meant as a type of maturing, developing, branching out, but it doesn't feel that way. There are no fresh ideas here, and no sense of refinement either. What's mostly felt here is what's missing. And what's missing are any of the breakneck fiddle tunes that once were Old Crow's bread'n'butter. There are no re-imaginings of jug band standards, no gems dug out of obscure blues records and re-contextualized.

What we get instead is "Hotel In Memphis," a hagiographic dirge about Martin Luther King, Jr -- yeah, one of those. ("If you were there you'd swear it was more than a man who died.") We get "Methamphetamine," a song about Southern poverty and drug addiction as subtle as the grill of an F-350. "It's gonna rock you till you're out of a job, it's gonna rock you till you're out on the street ... Methamphetamine!" This is Deeply Concerned topical music, the kind of protesty protest music that Bob Dylan used to roll his eyes at.

And what's more, it's all delivered in tones curiously ... dorky. Yeah, I said dorky. I dislike a phony hillbilly drawl as much as anyone, but there's a diction to this phrasing, an insistence on the Northernness of the vowels, that suggests bow ties to me. It sounds square, uptight, a sort of Kingston Trio effect. But the vocals here sound also hesitant, unsure of the melody -- and often as not, off-key.

Now I can imagine this quavery, high-earnest sound coming across to a fan as fetching, somehow authentic. But when compared to Old Crow's earlier recordings, it just sounds unprofessional to me. Ryan Adams's last few albums have displayed a similar disregard for intonation and similar tendencies toward sloppy phrasing draped over irresolute melodies. So I don't know, maybe I don't get it, maybe that's the new thing, the future of Americana music. I just hope it's not the future of Old Crow Medicine Show.