The Sadies

On last year’s debut, Precious Moments, the Sadies’ bluegrass instrumentals, country death songs and twangy rebel rock made it easy for their listeners to connect the dots from country to surf rock. To say that Pure Diamond Gold spells out those connections doesn’t mean that it’s any less sophisticated, but there are few generic touchstones the Sadies leave unturned as they move deftly from Duane Eddy to Eddy Arnold. Their dusty frontier soundtracks to westerns never made are as evocative as ever, but they’re actually quite revved up placed next to surf and jailhouse rock that guitarist Dallas Good used to ply in Phonocomb with Don Pyle, who’s behind the boards for much of the album. Mixing in pungent doses of garage punk and bluegrass and gospels traditionals, the Sadies are a Canadian band doing a bang-up job of a wide spectrum of American roots music, which would make at least one case where American cultural imperialism has led to American cultural production being out-sourced to Canada.