Pitchfork

The Gourds are perhaps best known-- or most notorious-- for their bluegrass cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice". Still better than Dynamite Hack's "Boyz-N-The Hood" or (gulp) Barenaked Ladies' "Fight the Power", the cover was a live show stunt, and the Austin-based quintet are lyrically and musically above such hokey novelty. On the other hand, their tenth album, Noble Creatures, shows they're perfectly suited to the more, um, substantial novelty of the buoyant horns on "How Will You Shine?" and the tensely thrumming organ on "Kicks in the Sun"-- two of the album's most inventive and catchiest hooks.

Besides, the Gourds have also moved past bluegrass as an endpoint and have begun using it as a base for forays into other sounds and styles. Distinguishing them from one-time peers like the Hackensaw Boys and labelmates Chatham County Line, this new direction, as well as their punky restlessness and ongoing good humor, places them somewhere between the homespun artiness of Lambchop, the down-home exuberance of the Avett Brothers, and the give-'em-what-they-want chops of the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Between these three nodes, they cover a lot of territory: the jamband harmonies of "The Gyroscopic", the slight country swing of "Red Letter Day", the Cajun dance party that is "Cranky Mulatto" and "All in the Pack", the swamp blues of "Spivey". The band contains not one, but two singer-songwriters-- Kevin "Shinyribs" Russell and Jimmy Smith-- whose voices have a similar country texture and whose lyrics tend toward smart-aleck non sequiturs. "Take all the guts of the middle ages/ And the confessions from the glass cages/ Tie it all together on four stages," Smith sings on "A Few Extra Kilos", then wraps it all up with a Dr. Strangelove quote: "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good time with all that in Vegas."

Just when Noble Creatures begins to sound too wry for its own good, the Gourds offset the bouncy cleverness-- which likely plays well to excitable live audiences-- with slower, earnestly mournful songs like "Last Letter" and "Promenade". The latter is the album's best and most emotionally raw track, with a brutally rueful chorus: "I traded yer sweetness for my loneliness/ Yer confidence for my own regrets/ Yer simple grace for this disarray." Even the song's joke sounds knowingly pathetic, a chuckle that turns into a catch in the throat: "Somehow my losing just comes natural/ Like a Southern democrat." That they sound best on these soulful numbers proves the Gourds have more than a few tricks up their sleeves. For them, being underestimated just means they can surprise you more.