CROOKED STILL

Some Strange Country

[Signature Sounds]

Crooked Still’s fourth album arrives with a fitting title, for with this release the band has solidified its hold on musical territory that few if any have trod before. Is it folk? Or old-time? Is it bluegrass, or newgrass? Some species of classically styled chamber music? It sounds like all of those things, sometimes within the span of a single song. (The sweep of “Locust in the Willow” from bluegrass propulsion to classical bowed stateliness is one spectacular example.) Some Strange Country finds the band continuing to draw the bulk of its material from traditional fare (and adding one curveball, a gorgeous version of the Rolling Stones’ “You Got the Silver”). But by the time those songs have been filled up by the group’s lightning runs, delicate plucking and intricate interplays of cello, banjo, fiddle and double bass, they’ve become something quite different.

–Stuart Munro