This album heralds the welcome return to the stage of a band that first formed in Louisville, Kentucky way back in 1989.
Freakwater is a euphemism for 'moonshine', which can be defined as "illegally distilled liquor". The name is apt since there has always been a subversive, under-the-counter quality to a group that it brings a punk dynamic to old-time country music in a similar way to their contemporaries, Uncle Tupelo.
At the band's core both then and now are Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Ann Irwin, an enduring partnership that thrives on tension. These two women seem as close as siblings but, as the album cover shot in an anonymous hotel room suggests, they are never likely to set up a cosy house together.
Coming from diverse musical backgrounds, legend has it that they bonded over a mutual hatred of bagpipes. Falls Of Sleep is a good example of how their sweet and sour harmonies have lost none of their edge as they holler about treachery and mercy.
In a 1998 feature article, No Depression described their take on mournful mountain songs as "stubbornly anachronistic". Now the same 'zine call their Appalachian soul music "wholesomely weird".
Both these statements ring true; the latest recorded sounds may be a little less rough around the edges but their preference is still for a raw brand of 'new old time' that first led to be billed as purveyors of 'insurgent country'. It is fitting therefore that their first album for over a decade should be released on Bloodshot Records, the Chicago based label which first coined this particular sub-genre.
In a career marked by long periods of hibernation, the creative spark this time was rekindled after the 20th anniversary of their acclaimed 1994 album 'Feels Like The Third Time'. Named after the legendary queen and storyteller of One Thousand And One Nights, it shows that they have lost none of their unconventional attitude.
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Bean once likened making records to giving birth. The pain that precedes the pleasure was made tolerable for this record by having some experienced musical 'mid-wives' alongside them in the studio. These include trusted bassist Dave Gay and 'Bad Seed' Warren Ellis on violin.
It begins with the sinister beauty of What The People Want, which shows that Bean and Irwin retain a perverse fondness for dead baby songs.
In a similar vein, Down Will Come Baby takes the dark subtext to the 'Rockabye Baby' lullaby and dwells more on what happens when the bough breaks than on lulling the child to sleep.
Add to this the hymn to the seductive appeal of suicide on Take Me With You and you get the idea that any nice, homely qualities of these twelve new tunes are entirely unintentional.
There is something deeply satisfying about a band sticking so resolutely to a tried and tested model.
In the process, Freakwater remind us what was and is truly 'alternative' about genuine Alt.Country music.
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