With their previous albums like "Low Estate "and "Secret South," Colorado's SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER have successfully established themselves as contenders coming up on the rails in the alt.country stakes.
Of course ,in a genre stuffed to the gills with mavericks and faux - religious voyeurs, it helps that Denver's finest are led by a real son of a preacher man in DAVID EUGENE EDWARDS : a man whose fire water and brimstone voice continually summons both NICK CAVE and the spectre of JEFFREY LEE PIERCE to the feast.
Now down to a creative core of EDWARDS, PASCAL HUMBERT and JEAN-YVES TOLA, with " Folklore " SIXTEEN HORSE POWER take us ever further into the blackened backwoods with covers of THE CARTER FAMILY, HANK WILLIAMS and traditional folk songs drawn from the U.S. and Eastern Europe .
Musically SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER here draw on ancient instrumentation more than ever ,with austere, plucked banjos and brushed drums usually to the fore and the band playing with both the portent and disciplined economy of the BAD SEEDS at their best .
It must be said that fun, fervour and good time feelings rarely enter the equation here. Indeed, the only numbers that are even remotely upbeat are the French Canadian-influenced two step "La Robe a Parasol " and the Carter Family cover " Single Girl." Mind you,this latter conveys a hardline message of female chastity, so erm, everything's relative .
Otherwise " FOLKLORE" is a dark unrelenting affair, but this desolate terrain fits Edwards' blasted blues and sin -strewn missives like a spike-filled glove and the album's 37 minutes are never less than evocative and utterly compelling .
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The arrangments of the traditional songs are superb. The Tuvan "Two String Fiddle" achieves a ghostly suspension through massed strings; "Sinnerman " wears robes of bible black and approaches the diseased acoustic rockabilly previously patented by the band , but - perhaps the finest track here - "Outlaw Blues " relates a brilliant broiling Hungarian folk tale of a young man and his roan grey horse .
Which isn't to say SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER's original compositions are second rate, either .Indeed, songs like "Flutter "- lonely piano chords, floating accordians, ravaged strings and raw, untreated heartbreak are startling in the extreme and establish the Denver trio as one of the finest of all exponents of the alt. country tradition.
Indeed, tracks like "Flutter," the sepulchral poise of "Hutterite Mile" and the all-out sadness in their reading of Hank Williams' "Alone And Forsaken" - to this writer - recall nothing more vivid than Nick Cave's devastating "Your Funeral , My Trial" And it dosen't get much more seminal than that .
Harrowing and tremendously affecting" Folklore" may not be for the faint - hearted , but it confirms that in a rock' n' roll world of fakers and scammers that SIXTEEN HORSEPOWER are the real, God -fearing deal.
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