The Golden Angle

It's hard to know what to make of this album. David Benedict is clearly an extraordinarily gifted young musician, zipping up and down his mandolin with world-class precision and speed. He is joined by similarly talented musicians, including David Grier (on guitar), Mike Barnett and Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Missy Raines (bass) and Wes Corbett (banjo) for his ‘instrumental string band music’. But there's no other way of putting it: the end results are simply not very exciting. Tracks such as ‘The Golden Angle’ or ‘High Stepping Jessy’ are complex pieces, in that they have a lot of changes to them, but it is hard to fathom what these changes achieve. Too much of this music consists of one rapid note after another, with no discernible purpose; it's difficult to work out what Benedict is trying to say.

Things improve on the laid-back ‘Waltz for Griffin’ but it's not until the sixth track, ‘8 is My Favorite Color’, that we hear anything genuinely satisfying: it's a toe-tapping, ragtime-influenced swing with a cheeky melody, hints of Django Reinhardt and a Hawaiian mischievousness to David Grier's slide guitar. ‘Lawnmower’, too, ups the energy levels by moving closer to straightforward bluegrass. It demonstrates a grittiness and attitude to Benedict's playing missing elsewhere, and showcases some witty and exuberant solos from all musicians. It's one of many places that recall Chris Thile and The Punch Brothers, but while Benedict shares Thile's love of a complex journey, he doesn't evince a similar love of discord or jarring harmonic surprise.