There are all kinds of ways to approach this category — back-porch ballads, ’70s country twang, amped-up rockabilly two-step — but nobody throws it all together like Girls Guns & Glory, a local group who’ve perfected so many aspects of old-time Americana that you might as well elect them mayors of Frontiertown. (If only it didn’t seem that their term might end in all kinds of scandal and corruption.) GGG draw from the Slim Cessna’s Auto Club approach to country, mixing it up with mariachi trumpets, voodoo swing beats, sunny guitars, and manic punk tempos. “667” jams gunky neon bar-brawl blues with eerie spaghetti-western whistling — it’s the sort of experimentation that keeps fans tipped back on their boot heels. Singer Ward Hayden presides with stoic croons that would probably sound a lot better wailing out of some dusty dashboard speakers in a rusty pick-up truck than through your iPod buds. And if that’s not a sign of a great roots band, what is?
Runners-up
1_Movers & Shakers
2_Cassavettes
3_Dennis Brennan
