Snakefarm

Husband and wife duo Snakefarm take Traditional Folk music -- in their case, old American classics like "Frankie and Johnny," "John Henry," and "Tom Dooley," among others -- and catapults it into a modern electronica setting. What makes their material so effective is the effortlessness with which this transition is made. Listening to "This Train That I Ride," for example, reveals how easily the themes with which these old songs are dealing -- loneliness, love, disenchantment, the empty spaces that separate people from places and people they love, struggle and survival -- can be thrust into the atmospheric, distant and sometimes cold and alienating genre of electronic music. As these folk standards have been done and re-done so many times, Snakefarm emerge stronger for not just modernizing the material, but for making these tunes very much their own. If their funky, jazzy version of "St. James Infirmary" doesn't get you grooving, perhaps nothing will.