O’Death - Head Home

have that rare quality of being better in reality than they may seem on paper. They are very basic to describe: a band of five American guys who play music in a traditional/folk vein. But that doesn’t even scratch the veneer of what you experience listening to their quite outstanding album ‘Head Home’.

To listen to this record is to sit around the campfire while writing grisly ghost stories are told; to attend a funeral procession for the village hobo or to be reeled around in a whirling frenzy like in some remote Russian village dance. You’ll never know where you’ll end up next, that’s for sure.

‘Allie Mae Reynolds’ is a rip-roaring hoedown - talk about a barnstormer… But before you stop reading, stop right there, ‘cause this is that rarest of specimens; country/folk music that is actually quite cool. Think the flashes of mania you get with Gogol Bordello or world-weary wit and wisdom of The Pogues rather than the hackneyed idea of Dolly Parton or the nightmarish memory of The Mavericks.

The blood and guts of Nick Cave and Tom Waits are instantly conjured upu with haunting, raw tracks such as ‘O Lee O’, and if there is a criticism, it’s the genre not the passion of O’Death - basically, after a while, country music is so same-y it’s painful. However great the band are who play it. O’Death can’t escape this, but they come within a whisker of converting us to appreciating alt-country, if not becoming fully fledged fans.

On ‘Head Home’, O’Death will grab you by the hand, whirl you around and leave you breathless, and you can’t really ask for much more than that.