Originally from New York state, Old Crow Medicine Show began life as a quintet of street-corner buskers, before a you-wouldn't-dare-make-it-up discovery by a passing Doc Watson outside a North Carolina pharmacy led to their relocation to Nashville — where, mercifully, Music Row signally failed to rub off OCMS's rougher edges. Substantially recorded in Nashville's legendary Studio B and Woodland Sound Studios, O.C.M.S., their full-length debut, sounds as far as possible like something Hank Williams might have made, had he survived into his 80s (the raffish, ragged works of Williams' grandson, Hank Williams III, are actually a decentish reference point). As on few modern country albums, it's possible to hear the fingers hitting the strings, and the horsehair scraping on the fiddle strings.

Producer David Rawlings had the admirable sense to recognise that the biggest favour he could do these road-worn, mutually attuned and instinctive musicians was to let them get on with it. The result is that O.C.M.S. sounds like OCMS's songs were issuing in through the window from a pitch at the end of your road, rather than from your speakers. Either way, you'd be grateful — the songs are consistently fabulous. The lament "We're All in This Together"… read more »