“Following hot on Dan Hick’s idiosyncratic heels is a twenty something acoustic warrior named Pokey LaFarge, who makes a bigger, more lasting impression playing kazoo and guitar than his pop-mainstream competition makes fronting entire electrified bands. A vocal polymorph, he shifts effortlessly from Gus Cannon–style jug-band humor (“Mr. Nobody”) to Mississippi John Hurt–style pathos (“Josephine”) through two indie albums of original material. This itinerant Kentucky-bred minstrel name-checks everybody from Bessie Smith and Guy Clark to Femi Kuti as influences on his MySpace page, where he proudly tags his own recordings “riverboat soul.”

- Carol Cooper, Village Voice, New York, Ny