Green Man Review’s Cat Eldridge gave a rave review to the previous release from Crooked Still, Shaken By a Low Sound. One of their biggest selling points, he found, was the lack of drums in their non-traditional string band lineup that includes cello and banjo. On their latest release Still Crooked the band has had some personnel changes, but … still no drums.
“We’re a groove-based band without a drummer,” says lead vocalist Aoife O’Donovan. Notice she says “groove-based,” not jam-based, and there’s a subtle but major distinction. Listen to the final track on Still Crooked and you’ll hear what she means. That track is the old Mississippi John Hurt blues, “Baby, What’s Wrong With You?” This is the blues like you’ve never heard ’em. It’s an uptempo arrangement, totally reimagined from its original form and stunning in execution, yet true to the spirit of the original. O’Donovan moans and whines and wheedles her way through each of the song’s bare-bones verses, fleshing out the stone-cold bluesiness of the words with her every vocal nuance. There ain’t much to these verses. A typical example: “Who who baby, who been here baby — honey, since I’ve been gone?” But in the spirit of John Hurt yet an entirely different way, she milks it for all it’s worth. These young musicians have a lot of fun with this one, playing it like a Bill Monroe bluegrass song, the bass and cello and even at times the banjo driving forward the groove, as O’Donovan’s vocals and Brittany Haas’s fiddle swoop and soar through the melody and harmonies.
Haas is a new addition to the lineup, as is cellist Tristan Clarridge, who succeeds the departed Rushad Eggleston. Clarridge also plays occasional second fiddle, and Greg Liszt is still on the banjo, Corey Dimario on bass. Notwithstanding the lineup changes, Crooked Still continues to play music in a similar vein — old-time string band and folk songs played on instruments more commonly found in a chamber quartet. If it sounds precious, it’s not. It’s very vital and lively.
This is Crooked Still’s third album in the group’s five years, and possibly their best. One of the most amazing things about it is that it was recorded live, in one day, in one big room together, after three days of rehearsal. (You get a sense of that when, at the end of that final track, Clarridge pulls a deep farting sound out of his bass and O’Donovan says (as the others giggle), “Is that the outtake? I thought we were doing a serious take!”
That spirit of fun is evident throughout the album’s 13 tracks, even slow and solemn ones like the opening track, “Undone In Sorrow,” and the ancient fallen lover’s ballad, “Captain, Captain.”
The material ranges from old spirituals (“Pharaoh,” “Wading Deep Waters”) and hymns (“Florence”) to the fast bluegrass of “The Absentee,” drawn from Jesus’ parable of the “one and 99” and “Tell Her to Come Back Home,” from Uncle Dave Macon via Dirk Powell and others. There are some contemporary songs too, including O’Donovan’s “Low Down and Dirty,” in which the Pretty Polly figure turns the tables on her lover and kills him in the graveyard instead; and “Oh Agamemmnon,” which O’Donovan co-wrote with Haas, with lyrics drawn from Greek tragedy. This one starts with a very old-time-sounding fiddle and musically draws on lots of traditional songs, including “Wabash Cannonball.”
Crooked Still continues to stretch the boundaries of acoustic American music. They’re respecters of tradition who love to innovate in the playful spirit of all the best folk music. Still Crooked cements their place at the forefront of the new folk revival.
(Signature Sounds, 2008)
[Gary also interviewed members of Crooked Still in 2007 at Pickathon. You’ll find his write-up here.]
