CD’s I’m Diggin’ Right Now: Sarah Jarosz & Chris Pandolfi

CD’s I am Diggin’ Right Now is an occasionally occurring series where I casually highlight some discs (new and old) that I think you might like, without boring you with an overly-wordy, metaphor-filled “review” that I often like to bestow upon some other discs.

I have long admired many Bluegrass artists.  Watching a Bluegrass band tear it up in a live setting is a singular and exhilarating concert experience. That said, I often find myself bored or simply underwhelmed when it comes to Bluegrass on CD. Obviously it’s difficult to recreate the energy of a live show in any genre with studio recordings, but for me at least, it’s always been even more so with Bluegrass, not totally sure why, it just is, I guess. More than with other styles of live music, I get a special thrill when I see a fiddle or mandolin player nail a solo in concert to the point where the audience feels required to acknowledge the effort with a hardy round of applause. Recently, two Sugar Hill Records releases have stood out to me and have really made me pay the same amount of attention to the recording as I would if I were seeing either artist live.

Sarah Jarosz - Song Up In Her Head: What can be said about critical-darling Jarosz and this disc that hasn’t been said already? That it isn’t very good (get it? no ones sayin’ that…okay, I’ll stop). Her young vocals have a smokiness to them that at times makes you forget her age (18). Her sometimes sultry and even playful compositions can’t hide that she is a serious Bluegrass artist that is still respectful of tradition. I have read that she is planning on attending Berklee College of Music in Boston soon, and I’ll be quite interested to see what she does with all that book-learnin’.

Chris Pandolfi - Looking Glass: Pandolfi is a member of the popular Infamous Stringdusters (along with Jeremy Garrett, who plays some fiddle on here and has also recently released a solid solo-disc as well). This disc breaks away from the standard Bluegrass mold and at times, effectively displays a rather laid back and even jazzy tone, always with a pretty strong sense of melody. When records focus primarily on instrumentation, especially in the Bluegrass realm, it’s important to shake things up a bit and avoid the fast-as-lighting-pickin’ monotony that can often be the case. With this being his second solo-release, Pandolfi seems to be on his way to making a name for himself outside of his regular Stringdusters gig.