Montreal Mirror
Review by Rupert Bottenberg
8/10
December 2004
Golem – Homesick Songs (Aeronaut)

While much of the neo-klezmer movement in NYC has taken an off-putting, difficult avant-garde tack in revitalizing the often frenzied Jewish folk music, the sextet Golem do the opposite. The dozen songs here, which suggest a wide-ranging roll through "the old country" - Odessa to Romania, Bialystok to Turkmenistan - are consistently delivered with an engaging, rough-and-tumble rock 'n' roll backbone. Moreover, an enthusiastically irreverent, rascally spirit pervades Homesick Songs, playing perfect counterpoint to the devoted research and refinement that clearly went into the record.