See You Around

After years of teasing us – an impromptu debut at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2014, a world tour and a handful of videos and singles (‘Little Lies’, ‘Crossing Muddy Waters’) – we now finally have a 12-track album by I’m With Her, comprising 11 originals and one Gillian Welch song (‘Hundred Miles’). See You Around is a glorious panoply of astonishing talent and engaging material. Sarah Jarosz’ voice is warm, round and deeper in tonal inflection than her fellow bandmates, accented by that trademark tinge of Texas twang. Aoife O’Donovan possesses a higher, tighter instrument with a sharper edge. Sara Watkins occupies the middle ground, fuller and more forward and even-keeled in projection.

We haven’t heard the likes of I’m With Her in generations. ‘Game to Lose’ is a rumination on romantic entanglement masquerading as a funky bluegrass hay-ride, containing some hair-raising harmony singing. ‘Pangaea’ effortlessly glides between solo and harmony passages in an ethereal cloud of exultation. There's even an all-instrumental number (‘Waitsfield’) to showcase the mad fingerpicking and bowing skills – fiddle, guitar, mandolin – of this three-headed monster of a band.