Old Crow Medicine Show - Big Iron World

Old Crow Medicine Show's Big Iron World is a stomping string-band celebration of old-time music, played with punk energy and plenty of grit.

Released in 2006, it was the Nashville outfit's follow-up to their breakthrough O.C.M.S., and once again David Rawlings produced. He captured the band's rough-and-ready acoustic attack with a light touch, so the fiddle, banjo and harmonica sound like they are being played in your living room, and the group's gang vocals feel like a whole porch full of friends joining in. The result is a record that sounds handmade in the best possible way.

The set mixes originals with songs pulled from the deep well of American folk and blues. "Down Home Girl" opens with a swaggering, rollicking groove, and "Cocaine Habit" turns an old-time drug song into a jittery hoedown. "James River Blues" is the tender heart of the album, a lament for a vanishing way of life on the river, and "Minglewood Blues" gives a well-worn standard a fresh shot of adrenaline.

Twenty years on, it still sounds like a front-porch party with the volume turned up. If old-time music has ever seemed dusty, this record blows the cobwebs clean off, and it makes a fine argument that the oldest songs can still kick the hardest.