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.
3 Responses
Thanks for the nice reviews. Sarah Jarosz will be attending New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in the fall, 2009. She was offered scholarships to attend both Berklee and NEC.
My pleasure. Thanks for the update/correction as well. It’s pretty amazing to even think of someone as talented as her, with a great record under her belt already, heading off to a prestigious school to become even more well-trained and mature in her art.
[...] CDs He’s Diggin’ Right Now: Although he’s a fan of bluegrass music in a live setting, The Gobblers Knob Kelly Dearmore confesses that bluegrass on CD is often underwhelming. However two recent Sugar Hill releases, Sarah Jarosz’s Song Up In Her Head and Chris Pandolfi’s Looking Glass, have caught his attention. [...]