Frog Holler

Reading, Pennsylvania's Frog Holler isn't just another alt-country band with a regrettable name, a flannel-and-beard aesthetic and an obsessive fatalism summed up by lines like, "How come there's Heaven for us, but not 'til we die?/Meanwhile there's Hades for us, while we're alive." On their recently released fifth album, Haywire, they're ironing out the details on becoming the definitive such band, bringing flashing banjos and mandolins, Byrdsy harmonies, woozy pedal steel and accordion, and the kind of guitar-flogging that owes as much to basement bong sessions as Crazy Horse records. Frog Holler's country amateurism is superceded only by their rock & roll resolve, and a narrative persuasion that generally steers clear of tunes as smart as they are deceptively off-hand.