OCMS - Big Iron World

Old Crow Medicine Show
Big Iron World
Nettwerk
(released Aug. 29)

What better day is there than Labor Day for reveling in the madcap excellence that is Old Crow Medicine Show? They play working-man songs with a working-man style -- assuming, of course, we're talking about the kind of working man who likes to cut loose and get in some trouble every now and again. And as working men themselves, damnation do they work hard. If you've seen them live, you know the "product" they crank out is born of sweating, stomping, shouting and a blur of the arms and legs and heart and soul they use to work their magic on their instruments. Very rarely can a band so vivid, so visceral in its live show deliver much of that magic in a recording, but "Big Iron World" loses nothing in translation.

Blame David Rawlings. If anyone would know just the right touch (a very, very light one) to lay on OCMS, it's him. In the producer's chair here, Rawlings lets the music do the straight-talking. And it speaks volumes. It just has a little whiskey on its breath, that's all.

The songs mine some old territory -- woman trouble, job trouble, drug trouble, trouble trouble -- with an old-timey style, but there's nothing stale about this band. The youth and endless-seeming energy of the five lovable scamps -- Ketch Secor, Willie Watson, Critter Fuqua, Morgan Jahnig and Kevin Hayes, joined on a few tracks by Gillian Welch on drums and Rawlings on guitar -- make the songs crackle with life and spirit. Hell, it's not like trouble went out of style just because we have iPods now. That's why OCMS can be so old-school and still so relevant.

Adding to the freshness is OCMS's ability to find among its ranks not one, not two, but three -- or is it four? -- talented singers, each a perfect match to the style of song he sings. No one can deliver a stern lecture (in this case on minding your own business) with as much tongue in cheek as Hayes on the chuckle-inducing "Let It Alone," one of those great OCMS moments where the roguish wit sparkles just as much as the music. And Secor, simultaneously the most plaintive and most scrappy of the bunch, leads you to believe he's singing a heartbreak song on "My Good Gal" ... until you notice after a few listens that wrapped up in all that heartache is a cold, hard murder song. Also in the mix on that delicious track is some gorgeous guitar work by Rawlings -- not in a way that upstages the boys. It mixes in just as well as, well, heartache and murder. If you dug "Tell It To Me" from " O.C.M.S." you've got the sequel here with "Cocaine Habit" -- also an adaptation of a Depression-era ditty. The songs are so similar that as "Cocaine Habit" opens Secor is heard launching into "Tell It To Me" by mistake. There's a pause, some hearty laughter all around, and then he goes right into the correct song and just smashes it. And make no mistake it's a loose take on an old standard -- I doubt the name drops of Karl Rove and Elijah Wood were in the original lyrics.

So, yessir, these boys work hard, and it shows. Fiery solos, down-home harmonies, saucy lyrics, some old soul, and a way of making both their own songs and their covers sound like true originals -- all of it comes together to make for a very fine product from the loud, clanking Old Crow Medicine Show sound factory straight to your door. So raise your glass to these working men this Labor Day, and take comfort that there's still some fun to be had in this Big Iron World.