Tim O'Brien Band

Both traditionalists and progressively oriented bluegrass fans will cotton to Tim O'Brien's new album. Featuring a seasoned, stripped down, ready-to-kick-tail quintet – Mike Bub (bass), Shad Cobb (fiddle), Jan Fabricius (vocals/mandolin) and Patrick Sauber (banjo/guitar) with guest virtuoso (and O'Brien's Hot Rize bandmate) Bryan Sutton lending guitar licks to two tracks – Tim O'Brien Band is like a piece of furniture destined to be an heirloom.

The music, lovingly hewn from the finest, carefully chosen materials, includes five originals, two by O'Brien and one each by Fabricius, Camp, and The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach. The rest are freshly whittled old faves from the likes of Woody Guthrie (‘Pastures of Plenty’), Memphis Minnie (‘Diggin' My Potatoes’) and Norman Blake (‘Last Train from Poor Valley’). Fabricius and O'Brien make for a splendid harmonic pairing throughout while the former takes a fine lead turn on ‘The Other Woman’. Another exceptional pairing lines up two back holler ballads – ‘Beyond’, a down-tempo hymn written by O'Brien and Camp, and ‘My Love Lies in the Ground’, a decidedly grimmer composition by Dirk Powell – during the course of which O'Brien's band disturbs every Appalachian bone from heaven to hell.