Still Crooked

来自美国波士顿的年轻组合Crooked Still曾是一帮音乐学院的学生，2004年开始正式组建，这张专辑是他们的第三张专辑。从音乐的感觉看这帮年轻人的音乐素质相当了不起，尤其是对乐器的理解。仔细听来，发现曲曲欢快好听，且每曲有自己的小特点，第2首比较急促，配乐有点野蜂飞舞的味道。第11首是24秒的八音盒般的纯音。器乐拉的很热闹，主唱时而温柔自在时而高亢，却不觉得突兀。相反觉得松弛结合，特别不易厌倦。女主唱的声线要能再滑一点，颇具Alison Krauss潜质。 This third album, Still Crooked from Crooked Still, is an elegant package of superbly crafted musical styles taking country/folk as the deep foundation and veering off into exhilarating and exciting directions. Starting things off with a haunting version of the late Ola Belle Reed's "Undone In Sorrow" the album begins much like The Youngbloods Elephant Mountain when "Darkness, Darkness" opened that lp almost forty years before. Producer Eric Merrill doesn't need drums to propel this quintet, the fiddles a blazin' on a two and a half minute entry entitled "The Absentee", like the equally lively "Poor Ellen Smith", keep things flowing in a square dance sort of way. The slick twelve page booklet has lyrics to all the titles, "Captain Captain", serious and slow, making for a good read while the music plays. The devotion to the styles embraced is spot on, a reinvention of Sidney Carter's a cappella "Pharoah" from Rounder Records release of the many Alan Lomaxtapes, this one found on the compilation Southern Journey, Vol. 1: Voices from the American South, is stunning - even more so when you compare it to Carter's - or take the effort to actually put Sidney Carter's voice as the intro to this string-heavy rendition and hear the tremendous results. Picture the tempo of Lou Reed's "Street Hassle" cut in half, slowed down so that Aoife O'Donovan can pour her emotions all over the track. It's amazing stuff, and it can hardly be called "bluegrass" or be locked into one genre. Where Ray Charles gave us Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music back in 1962, Crooked Still bring those expressions into the new millennium. "Florence" is credited to T.W. Carter 1844 and is a more traditional country take, in the fashion of guitarist Peter Calo's excellent Cowboy Song from 2001 where he took traditional songs of the American frontier and recreated them. The dozen songs here, along with a cute 24 second "Theme From The Absentee", form an entertaining textbook including some established - and some rare - old songs, as well as originals, tailor-made for a contemporary audience. There's none of the respectful irreverence that labelmates Rani Arbow & Daisy Mayhem splash all over their Big Old Life album, Crooked Still more intent on studying their roots while exploring and expanding the sounds in a successful...and very satisfying way.