Maybe it's because of their history with slavery, or the persistence of the Bible Belt and its values, or the comedy-fueled stereotype of the incest-bred backwoods twins hopped up on moonshine. Or maybe it's just Billy Bob Thornton's recent career choices. But I'll be damned if I'm not scared of the south. Really scared.

Not that I have any real reason to be. Last time I toured the south, I didn't see any (overt) slavery or (overt) rapists, and Billy Bob's career was nowhere in sight. Although my friends were pulled over outside of Savannah for nothing other than looking urban, I didn't encounter any trouble on my nine-state journey-- except, that is, when a waitress at a Beale Street restaurant wouldn't return my fake ID. Christ, I've seen more trouble from the teen punks in "the pit" at Harvard Square. But the power of history and misleading entertainment prevailed: I am still scared shitless of the south.

So I thank God, among others of equal or lesser power, that the Sadies aren't from the south. Hearing the southern roots apparent in their music, one could conceive of them being from the south. But they're not even from America. Instead, the four wild men of the Sadies, led by Dallas and Travis Good, are from Toronto, of all places. If that sounds a little off, everything is going as planned. For the Sadies are a little off, making the rest of Bloodshot's growing roster seem downright traditional by comparison.

And it doesn't take long to realize this. The opening instrumental, "Pass the Chutney," manages to meld Dick Dale-style traditional surf-rock with a laid-back country backbeat, creating a sound that's as spooky as it is comforting. Then we're on to a cover of Elvis' classic '69 hit, "Loved on Look," which marked his comeback. You wouldn't expect anyone to pull this off. But with Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor providing rollicking vocals, the song both does the original justice, including the "shoop-shoops," while being an incredibly... well, fun rock 'n' roll song in its own right.

The rest of Tremendous Efforts-- engineered and mixed by Steve Albini-- is an equally unpredictable ride. After a surf/spaghetti western crossbreed ("Empty the Chamber"), the listener is lassoed and pulled through "The Last of the Good," a murderless murder ballad that employs, among other instruments, an accordion, a banjo, a reverb-drenched Fender, and a dark Hammond organ that alone makes the song worth hearing. The following "Flash" does Bringing It Back Home-era Dylan even better than Sadies labelmate Ryan Adams. And with "120 Miles Per Hour," they prove that they can do the alt-country thing well, too.

In a few instances, the Sadies seem to be simply exercising their genre skills. The peppy, pedal-steeled "Ridge Runner Rag," for instance, comes off more as a tongue-in-cheek stab at "The Dukes of Hazard" than a serious, honest-to-goodness rag. And a couple other instrumentals-- "The Creepy Butler" and "Ridge Runner Rell"-- are, at best, mood-setters. But when you've got excellent covers of both Gun Club frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce's "Mother of Earth" and Gerald Coffin and Carole King's "I Wasn't Born to Follow," there's little reason to lament the album's rare shortcomings.

I've realized, through this album, that I'm not as scared of the south as I'd previously thought. Let's face it: on the whole, southerners are an effusively polite breed of reformed slave-owners who don't threaten the intellectual hegemony of the Northeast. So, what's there to fear? Instead, we should fear people like the Sadies who take the south-- along with the west coast, the midwest, and Italian cinema-- and use it for their own gain, inevitably contorting what they took so that it's almost unrecognizable. After all, what's scarier: a southerner, or four Canadians that think they're southerners? For fear of what they'll take next, I suggest you listen to them.

-Ryan Kearney