The Carolina Chocolate Drops began their two-month tour with stops in Georgia and South Carolina last weekend and are set to perform next at Dartmouth College's Spaulding Auditorium this Saturday, with a post-concert discussion to follow. The band's Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig, set for release in the US on February 23, is available for pre-order in the States now through the Nonesuch Store, with seven bonus tracks. The album is due out on January 25 in the UK, where a new BBC review calls it "an extraordinary and stylish history lesson of an album."

Reviewer Lloyd Bradley sees the album as "an unashamedly foot-stomping countrified fiddle-and-banjo racket" through which the band has been able to reclaim a style generally relegated to "exclusively hillbilly property." On the album, the band explores the broader, trans-Atlantic musical exchange that took place at the genre's roots and went on to influence so many other styles further down the line. "And in the hands of the Carolina Chocolate Drops," he insists, "this history lesson is far from dry."

The band tells this lesson through a combination of styles, mixing "traditional songs with original compositions and a couple of surprising covers," says the review, "allowing them to honour the past, then subtly nudge it forward linking it to the modern music they grew up with."

One such cover is "the pickin’, fiddlin’ and slappin’ version of Blu Cantrell’s 'Hit ‘em Up Style,'" which Bradley dubs Genuine Negro Jig's "big surprise" and "the highlight of an extraordinary and stylish album."

Read the full review at bbc.co.uk. For tour information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. To pre-order a copy of the album in the US, visit the Nonesuch Store.