Hoolima

The allure of bluegrass, from its early beginnings in Kentucky, has spread far and wide, leaving its influence in many unlikely places. Estonian band Curly Strings have chops to match many an American and have fused the upbeat Southern sound with their own ethnic styles to create a newgrass that speaks to the Baltic sensibility and beyond. From proper virtuosic numbers such as ‘Aastapäev’ to mellower pensive tracks like ‘Avarus’ this album, in its ebb and flow, plays like a conversation across the pond, using music as the lingua franca.
It's a standard string-band line-up (fiddle, mandolin, guitar and upright bass), but with lyrics in Estonian, striking instrumental numbers such as ‘Firebird/Kribu-Kribu Polka’ and distinctively Celtic-sounding moments like ‘Edasi Anda’, which mark out these musicians as sponges of myriad cultures. This melding does not seem at all forced; it is at once natural and innovative, following a similar pattern to bluegrass darlings Punch Brothers. One gets the sense that Curly Strings could be American musicians from a parallel universe in which Estonians had colonised Appalachia.