Motorhome

Creating fresh-sounding roots music ain’t easy. It’s a bit like trying to make a new antique. Somehow, though, the quintet riding in Fort Collins’s Motorhome manage to pull it off. Singer-guitarist Matt Thornton shakes up the formula with the gruff incongruity of his voice; on “Innocent I Know,” he recalls a backwoods James Hetfield. And if co-frontman Matt Mahern, aka “P-Mann,” isn’t quite as distinctive, his braying delivery is tougher than usual for the genre. Just as important, multi-instrumentalist Darren Radach, bassist Ben Prytherch and drummer John Motley, who’s since left the group, bite into the material instead of nibbling its edges, as on “I Know Better,” a raveup that finds everyone shouting, “Don’t love you!” with lusty glee. Which is always the best kind.