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Get on the bus, y’all, for the grand tour of the Old South. Ollabelle’s excellent debut is a nostalgic trip round the haunts of America’s traditional sound.  This eclectic group of six, thanks to their wide-ranging musical skills (including both male and female vocalists), manage to cover all the stops along the way, evoking Southern Baptist choirs next to rambling blues singers in smoky jook-joints through originals, covers of traditional songs, and songs by such luminaries as Andrae Crouch and the Carter Family.  It is a sign of their skills that the new songs stack up well to the old ones.

T-Bone Burnett, unsurprisingly, is listed as executive producer, but there is less folk here than on the soundtracks for “O Brother Where Art Thou?” or “Cold Mountain”.  This is more southern than Appalachian blues and gospel, and unlike, say, Gillian Welch’s harsh drawl, there is an emphasis on harmonious blending.  The album opens with a rumbling choir over a bare stomping rhythm ­ you can picture the swaying, the gowns a-flapping, and the raised, shaking arms.  The next couple of songs are a change in gears ­ moody and crawling, with a bubbling river of organ-­and more typical of the album’s sound.

“Elijah Rock,” shuffling, whispery and late-night jazzy like Norah Jones, contains lines like “Satan is a liar,” and this is another feature of Ollabelle-­traditional, un-modernized, up-front spirituality.  This music has deep Christian roots, and it seems more authentic and natural than a lot of the current Christian re-hashing of secular pop.  “Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus” is from an obviously rich tradition, while “Jesus On The Mainline” compares prayer to a telephone call, in repetitious lyrics that borrow from music of slaves.  The latter features Glenn Patscha’s slightly gravely voice and is sprawling and delicious like a summer’s day.

Patscha also tackles the apocalyptic blues of “John the Revelator,” about, obviously, the apostle writing the book of Revelation, and which pits, call and response style, his distorted, phone-line vocal against the girls’ harmonies.  His “I Don’t Want To Be That Man” is the harshest song and imitates a hard-luck bluesman’s weathered voice over clanking National Steel Guitar.  Amy Helm and Fiona McBain have the more sultry and sweet numbers.  On the Carter Family’s “The Storms Are On The Ocean” -- the song most clearly from the Appalachian tradition-­McBain’s voice floats purely like Eva Cassidy.  Helm is more like an R & B diva.  On the closing “All Is Well” the trio blend into a soothing, benedictory stream.

Currently you’d think slinky poppets barely distinguishable from their sex-obsessed secular counterparts or goateed, loud, auditorium-filling praise-rockers were the future of Christian music.  But the counter-argument is that in a world of growing meaninglessness, music that drinks proudly from the springs of Christian tradition may be just what the folks are looking for.

Nick Mattiske