Review | Songlines

City on a Hill

Rating: ★★★★

View album and artist details

Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

Mile Twelve

Label:

Delores the Taurus Records

July/2019

Richard Thompson's ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ has become something of a new bluegrass standard thanks to The Del McCoury Band's recording, and the deceptively spry version of Thompson's achingly humane ‘Down Where the Drunkards Roll’ that opens the second album from this smart young bluegrass five-piece may yet have a similar effect. David Benedict (mandolin), Catherine ‘BB’ Bowness (banjo), Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Evan Murphy (guitar, vocals) and Nate Sabat (bass, vocals) are clearly a band on the rise, having already received a brace of individual and collective International Bluegrass Music Association Momentum Awards since coming together in the thriving Boston bluegrass jam scene in 2014. Their 2017 debut Onwards caught the attention of esteemed session player and Hot Rize member Bryan Sutton, whose powerful, clear-as-a-bell production of City on a Hill well serves the group's aim to show that original bluegrass music, written and played by young people, is very much alive.

The eight originals here – often spotlighting characters in crisis such as a modern war veteran with PTSD (‘Jericho’) or a man unable to escape the stigma of the penal system (‘Innocent Again’) – clearly respect tradition, yet feel bracingly contemporary and relevant. It is a winning combination that also applies to Mile Twelve themselves.

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