Chock full of more vitality than most any other component you’re going to hear in a country, bluegrass or roots record this spring, the banjo play in tracks like High Fidelity’s “Feudin’ Banjos” feels like aural joy personified for the pastoral-minded. There’s so much intensity to the strings that we find in this song and the dozen others that join it in High Fidelity’s new album, Banjo Player’s Blues, and in all honesty, this very intensity is what sets the record apart from all others I’ve heard in the last month or two. Bluegrass is already a genre that demands a lot of dexterity and skill out of its players, but in the case of this particular unit, listeners can expect to hear some top of the line showmanship devoid of any actual artistic indulgence.
URL: https://highfidelitybluegrass.com/
Right from the jump in “Old Home Place” and “You Made the Break,” the vocal harmonies featured in Banjo Player’s Blues feel like an extension of their related lyrical substance. “Take My Ring From Your Finger” and “The Picture on the Wall” sting with an emotionality that simply wouldn’t have been accessible to us were they not adorned with such a rich aesthetical accent, and to some extent, the same can be said of the swaying “Helen” and the especially-balladic “His Charming Love.” Even minute textures and subtle tones are contributing to the larger narrative here, which isn’t always the case with modern music – regardless of the genre in question.
There’s so much swing to the rhythm in “The South Bound Train,” slow-rolling “Tears of Regret” and flamboyant title track that the addition of percussion to the mix of these songs would have been entirely over the top. In music like this, and really all bluegrass of the straightforward variety, drums don’t inspire nearly as much of a pulsating chill-factor as the sheer might of the strings do, and acts like High Fidelity are wise to keep such frills out of the equation altogether. It’s one thing to be liberally melodic and compositionally experimental in the studio, particularly within the parameters of a classical genre like this one, but to step any further out of the familiar formula patter than this group does here would be improper and, frankly, bad for their brand in the long-term.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/banjo-players-blues/1503120396
Bluegrass fans wondering who they can trust and rely on for solid new music this June really can’t beat turning to High Fidelity for a hot summer fix. Banjo Player’s Blues is loaded with thirteen amazingly engaging songs that touch on elements of the bluegrass genre both old and new alike, and if it’s any sort of indication as to what its creators have got in store for the world in the future, it won’t be the lone LP they cut to relative acclaim. There’s still some room for High Fidelity to continue growing alongside their present campaign, but for what they’re producing at the moment, I think they should be regarded as one of the brighter bands to come out of their scene in this contemporary era.
Troy Johnston