Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir — the name just sounds like a bunch of middle-aged white guys making rootsy music. While this has been a recipe for pretentiousness set to a banjo and gut-bucket in the past, on Saint Hubert, the AMGC manage to pull it off masterfully. The songs have an old timey feel, but play more like mountain dance music with their stomping beats and tight musicianship. The band does occasionally dabble in depression era woeful lyrical styling, but they manage to make it work with a convincingly gritty and hollowed sound. The AMGC are at their best though on songs like "Fourteen Faces” and "Motherless Child,” in which they combine the moonshine and cousin courtin’ sound of the Ozarks with a punk-ish rockabilly beat.