It should shock no one that a new generation of acoustic-music heads prefers its ersatz-twang handsome and hooky (Avett Brothers), plastered and punk (Split Lip Rayfield) or jammed and jazzed-up (Yonder Mountain). But the enduring success of the more tradition-minded Old Crow Medicine Show is a little less explicable. Its mastery of folk forms is as profound as it is elastic, its picking deeply-pocketed and serious as a stampede for Mumford & Sons camping spots. On the newly released Carry Me Back, the Nashvillians are firing on all hooch-fueled cylinders, rocking and wailing and fiddling through every corner of the never-square square dance of old-time American music.
Listen For: The certified gold hit "Wagon Wheel," a euphoric sing-along that cops from Bob Dylan and instantly kills any lingering summertime blues.
