The Knitters

When a cover band such as the Knitters gets a tribute album like Poor Little Knitter on the Road, you know post-modernity has truly run amok. Punk and Americana superstars John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Dave Alvin and D.J. Bonebrake started the Knitters as a lark in 1982. Its first album Poor Little Critter on the Road (recut, track by track, by various Bloodshot bands on Poor Little Knitter) was a sloppy, eccentric but deeply affectionate mash-up of country, blues and folk — the kind of spontaneous Americana combustion that's familiar to every other punk to follow them. Twenty years after its debut, the band strangled and mangled their roots again with The Modern Sounds of... The Knitters — and if that sounds loose and lunatic, just wait until you see the band live.