Relax and enjoy a slice of rootsy Americana

Published: October 02. 2009 4:00AM PST

Has there ever been a band more aptly named than Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers?

OK. Maybe The Band.

But Crain and her Shivers play a spine-tingling brand of dusky roots-rock, the kind that could soundtrack the deadbeat drama that plays out each night in small-town dive bars across this country. Crain�s songs are hauntingly gorgeous, and her band plays them expertly.

No offense to the Shivers, but even they must know that the star of this show is their leader, a 22-year-old chanteuse of Choctaw Indian descent from a little town in Oklahoma. Crain�s quivering voice has prompted comparisons to eccentric harpist Joanna Newsom, and that has led some to categorize her excellent album, �Songs In the Night,� as part of the neo-hippie freak-folk genre, of which Newsom is a paragon.

I don�t hear that at all. Crain does quiver, but with an authentic emotional depth that anchors her songs firmly in the new world of Americana music with rising stars such as The Avett Brothers and Langhorne Slim.

The Washington Post called Crain�s voice �a keening instrument that, in terms of timbre and phrasing, is utterly narcotic.� That�s a dead-on description. Package that voice with those songs and that band, and you have something special.