Assiniboine & the Red

The Small Glories – grizzle-voiced Canadian folk-roots scene veteran JD Edwards and ex-Wailin' Jennys' Cara Luft – return to familiar territory in Assiniboine & the Red. An accomplished follow-up to 2016's debut, Wondrous Traveler, it finds the pair's rough-edged, bluegrass-laced, confessional-accented, Prairies-celebrating signature inked in to greater effect.

An extended love letter to landscape and belonging it may be, but there's no false sentiment here, even in the unabashed hymnals to the duo's native ‘Alberta’ and (complete with Native American chanting) ‘Winnipeg’, which open and close the album. Luft's clawhammer banjo lends a tangy bite to the pared-back ‘Long Long Moon’ and lamenting ‘Johnson Slide’. Edwards' sandpaper vocals lighten to crooning sugariness on the buoyantly brittle ‘Oh My Love’. A rousing anthem to the transformative power of song, ‘Sing’ raises a political dimension more directly voiced in the defiant ‘Don't Back Down’ where Fiachra Hayes' feisty fiddle duels with strident guitars and hoedown banjo to protest against the death of Prairie towns from the twin barbs of climate change and economics. Rising from hushed regret to blood-spilling threat, the dark-hued, dangerously interior ‘Pieces of Me’ glancingly conjures Dylan at his most desolate. Neil Osborne returns with a tighter, more cohesive and atmospheric production to showcase a duo getting winningly into their stride.