OK, this is a puzzle.

The band, Rant & Roar, no longer seems to be active. Their website address, rantroar.com, is inactive, and the Google can't find any trace of them. The musicians -- Dan Webb, on vocals, mandolin, guitar, button box and tin whistle, and Jeff Reed on vocals, djembe and bodhran -- aren't familiar to me, either, although we share an area code. (The disc lists a post office box in Gettysburg, not much more than an hour west of me.) I have no recollection of receiving this disc for review, although given the release date -- 2006 -- it had to have been a good long while ago. And, although the album is titled Vol. 1, there doesn't seem to have ever been a Vol. 2.

In fact, about the only proof of the band's existence -- besides the album's availability on Amazon, of course -- is a 2009 article from the Frederick (Maryland) News-Post, which explains how former rock musicians Webb, Reed and Ed Phillips (who didn't stay with the band) discovered sea shanties and made them a way of life. According to the article, they had a repertoire of some 300 songs and, despite the Gettysburg mailing address and 717 telephone number, they hail from Frederick, Maryland, and Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia. A second album, briefly mentioned in the story as being nearly complete, doesn't seem to have materialized.

Well, let's go with what we have, which is a CD boasting 19 sea-farin' songs. The songs are mostly familiar, with titles including "Yo Ho Ho," "Banks of Newfoundland," "Maggie May," "Blow the Man Down," "Sailor's Prayer," "Patty West" and "Paddy on the Railway." And they're ... not bad. The guys sing with gusto, the music is lively and fast. As is common with songs like these, they're sung with an aggressive growl.

It's not terribly polished, but that suits the milieu of the shanty, after all.