Old Crow Medicine Show - Paint This Town (LP)

Spin Paint This Town and you can almost smell the sawdust and spilled beer of a rowdy East Nashville night. Old Crow Medicine Show have always thrived on that mix of back-porch string band clatter and big-room singalong, and this 2022 set on ATO Records feels like a band freshly sharpened by the road, then locked in a studio with the amps humming. They cut it at their own Hartland Studio in East Nashville with Matt Ross-Spang in the producer’s chair alongside the band, and you can hear the room in the recordings, the clack of sticks and the scrape of bow on fiddle. It is not glossy. It is alive.

The title track kicks things off with a grin and a boot heel. Fiddle and harmonica race each other, the rhythm section snaps to attention, and Ketch Secor plays ringmaster with that half-yodel, half-yell he does so well. It is a joyride through small-town mischief, but there is a bittersweet edge in the way the chorus lifts, as if the party is bright because the streetlights are short on time. That tension has always been in Old Crow’s music, a blend of jubilation and reckoning, and Paint This Town leans into it.

Lineup-wise, this is a well-oiled crew. Secor’s fiddle and harp are the sparks, Cory Younts toggles between mandolin, keys and percussion, Morgan Jahnig’s bass keeps the cart from tipping, Mike Harris brings twang and bite on guitar, and Mason Via adds that new blood vocal lift and stringy flair. Jerry Pentecost’s drumming is a quiet game-changer here, giving the band a punch they hinted at on earlier records but commit to this time. You hear it in the way the grooves sit a little deeper, how the songs swing without losing their square-dance joy.

There is grit under the nails, but the songwriting reaches beyond saloon doors. Paint This Town is dotted with snapshots of American life that feel both current and inherited, the kind of stories you pick up at diners and bus stops. The band have long been historians as much as showmen, and the album’s most affecting moments arrive when they connect the dots between past and present. That lands squarely on “Gloryland,” which features Mavis Staples. Her voice, full of warmth and righteous weight, turns the song from a good gospel-tinged closer into a moment that lingers after the needle lifts. It is not a cameo for star power, it is a conversation with the roots of the music they love.

Production-wise, Ross-Spang is a savvy partner. He is known for capturing performances that breathe, and this record does that. Fiddles squeal when they need to, the banjo chatter sits right in the pocket, and the vocals have that front-row immediacy. It sounds like a band facing each other in a circle, which is exactly how this music should feel. If you are chasing Old Crow Medicine Show vinyl that actually rewards a good system, this is a worthy target. The low-end warmth of the bass and kick gives these songs heft on a turntable that you just do not get from a compressed stream.

Critics picked up on that energy. Outlets like Rolling Stone, NPR and American Songwriter all zeroed in on how the album balances barn-burners with broader reflections, and fans responded in kind, packing shows where the new material slotted in neatly beside “Wagon Wheel.” That is the trick, really, making a new record that does not ride the coattails of a standard. Paint This Town holds its own because it sounds like a band still curious about what else their old-time tool kit can do.

If you are crate-digging and see Paint This Town vinyl in the racks, do not overthink it. It is the sort of record that turns a quiet Sunday arvo into a kitchen hoedown, then has you pausing to take in a line that cuts a little deeper than you expected. For collectors, it also sits nicely alongside other Old Crow Medicine Show albums on vinyl, giving you that through-line from their busking days to their present bite. And if you cannot find it at your local Melbourne record store, it is easy enough to buy Old Crow Medicine Show records online. Plenty of shops shipping vinyl records Australia wide have copies, and this one earns its shelf space.

Old Crow have made rowdier albums and they have made sadder ones, but Paint This Town might be their most balanced in years. It is spirited, rooted, and just restless enough to keep you flipping the sides.