Crooked Still - Some Strange Country

With each successive album, Boston based acoustic explorers Crooked Still have succeeded in breaking down one genre barrier after another, creating an elegant and visionary interpretation of what contemporary folk and bluegrass music can sound like. "We have modern and traditional influences that confuse the boundaries," says bass player Corey DiMario. "We want to keep blurring those lines to make something all our own." For the fourth Crooked Still album Some Strange Country, due May 18 via Signature Sound, the adventurous quintet worked with producer Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss and Union Station) to further expand the quintet's sound, even to closing the album with an inspired take on "You Got The Silver" from The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed.

In keeping with the Crooked Still affection for old and new, "Silver" joins six traditional reworkings and four original songs to give Some Strange Country an appeal to both nu-folk and classic acoustic enthusiasts. The playing is flawless, humming with an intuitive interactive play and the arrangements have an almost lushly orchestrated feel -- but it is, to our ears, the resplendent vocals of Aoife O'Donovan that is Crooked Still's ace in the hole. By turns airily pretty and darkly beguiling, O'Donovan injects the stirring album opener "Sometimes In This Country" and the lovely, spare hymn "You Were Gone" with an enticing edge. “The music is not just ‘alternative bluegrass’ or whatever people used to call it,” the band's Brittany Haas remarks. “It’s at another level now: artful, but still grounded in that funky, string band thing.” Highly recommended.

Myspace   Artist Site

Crooked Still - "Sometimes In This Country" (from Some Strange Country)

Crooked Still - "You Were Gone" (from Some Strange Country)

DC streams are for sampling purposes only -- please support and respect the artist. Buy the music.

Comments

[radio-inimical]

I also noticed the voice right away.. what a voice...