A lot of bands use rhythm as a means of communicating to their audience, but few – if any at all – utilize it as frequently and specifically as bluegrass acts do. In the new record from High Fidelity, the aptly-titled Banjo Player’s Blues, the five-piece bluegrass band takes on the rhythmic swing of tracks like “The South Bound Train,” “Feudin’ Banjos,” “Turkey in the Straw” and “You Made the Break” as though they were always meant to record these songs. This LP isn’t lacking in passion on any level, but feels instead like an album defined by its abrasive lust for melodies no matter their seemingly abstract shape or intimidating size. Pastoral poetry aside, High Fidelity are telling us a story with fast-moving finger work in this record and sounding incredible doing so.
URL: highfidelitybluegrass.com/
You don’t need any lyrics in a song like “Turkey in the Straw” to detect the obvious emotional connection this band has with the music they play. There’s so much love in the harmonization of the strings, so much unfiltered enthusiasm for the beat – despite the absence of drums – that it’s often difficult to understand why this group would ever feel the need to step inside a recording studio when their live performances likely speak for themselves. This isn’t to dismiss “Old Home Place,” “Take My Ring From Your Finger” or “Dear God” as being underwhelming beside what they could be in the right circumstances, but rather to make a note of how fierce each would be in a more proper setting.
The southern soulfulness of the surreal singing in “Helen,” “Tears of Regret” and “His Charming Love” is probably what won me over the most when I was studying the surface cosmetics of Banjo Player’s Blues this past weekend. To tie together all of the intensities festering on the instrumental side of this LP, High Fidelity really needed to pull out the big guns on lead vocals here, but much as I had hoped, they come through no questions asked. Multidimensionality is overlooked in the country music realm, and especially among specified subgenres like folk, Americana, bluegrass and western swing, but in the case of a group like this one, it’s the very reason why we’re so excited about their music this month.
APPLE MUSIC: music.apple.com/us/album/banjo-players-blues/1503120396
Sometimes, less can produce a whole lot more than any listener or critic would expect it could, and in Banjo Player’s Blues, High Fidelity give this phrase even more meaning without translating as being even somewhat pretentious. There are still some angularities to their sound that I can see being shaved down by the establishment later on in their career together, but for the time being I think this is one of the best and most talented bluegrass crossover groups to make noise in the American underground lately. Banjo Player’s Blues isn’t a watershed breakthrough for the modern bluegrass movement, but in the listenability department, it’s one of the smartest albums I’ve had the pleasure of listening to this June. Great things are coming this band’s way, and that’s evidenced quite regularly throughout their phenomenal new record.
Clay Burton