Each roots-orientated rockband seems to be self-obliged to make an acoustic rootsalbum at some point. But with no other band - unless with The Triffids at that time - did you look forward to it so much as with 16 Horsepower. Folklore is not an in-between- albums record, this is how this band should sound in essence. And because of the song-selection it is a special album too.

Four of the ten tracks are new songs by singer David Eugene Edwards, who still sings like a desperate priest lost in a dark forest. Six are covers, as could be expected by The Carter Family and Hank Williams, but surprisingly enough also of traditionals from Hungary and Tuva (every time about horses). And with "La Robe a Parasol" we actually get a traditional French mazurka. All together they form a self-willed adapted collection of country songs.

So much variation does not harm the oneness. Edwards, Jean-Yves Tola and the resurfaced Pascal Humbert adopt a sober approach. Slow bass lines, old stringed instruments, like an Orpheum guitar from the thirties, a timeworn bandoneon, the typical banjo: together with the frail singing create a warm, yet enigmatic atmosphere that resulted in the band being labelled as "gothic country" by North European minds. They most resemble Violent Femmes, but slower, more intense, frugal. It seems as if they have been impregnated by Nick Cave.

This will become a cult-classic. Halfway through, some merriment comes dancing in with "Single Girl", but above all this universe is reigned by a sense of guilt, loneliness and loss. The name of the studio (Absinthe, in Denver) couldn't have been more appropriate.