O’Death

ALT.COUNTRY

O’Death are five guys with barely a shirt between them, who, despite hailing from New York, evoke the deep south in their punk country songs: toothless yokels and moonshine-fuelled barn dances. Greg Jamie’s weathered vocals swings from drawl to roar and has earned him comparisons to Tom Waits and Shane McGowan. On ‘Allie May Reynolds’, they are a stomping battle of banjos and fiddles, fit for saloon brawls, while ‘Travelin’ Man’ is a southern lament in the storytelling tradition. Vagabonds or punks, you decide. O’Death move the folk-revival from twee strums to whisky-soaked Americana.