No matter the tempo they’re arranged in or the velvety vocal they’re paired with in songs like “Ballad of Mary Ann,” “I’m Gonna Wait on Jesus” and “March Around Jericho,” the strings are almost always the brightest of a thousand shimmering elements for us to behold in the new album Take Me Back from bluegrass players Carolina Blue. Whether you’ve heard either of their first two albums prior to picking up Take Me Back shouldn’t have too big an impact on whether you’re able to connect with the music of Carolina Blue or not; truth be told, this LP feels like their most accessible offering so far. Bluegrass fans and casual listeners the same are likely to find a lot of melodic charisma to most every song here, and if you ask me, that makes this quite the rare record to come across in 2020.
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: https://www.carolinablueband.com/
Though David Stewart penned “Too Wet to Plow,” there’s not a moment in its three minutes and change in which it feels like Carolina Blue are inappropriately straddling someone else’s compositional integrity; on the contrary, they tend to sound really personal and intimate in their execution in every cover song here, from “Country Lovin’ Son of a Gun” to “Blue Grass.” It’s difficult to take material derived from another songwriter’s personality and fashion it into something that feels entirely original on its own, but in Take Me Back, this band makes it sound and look pretty simple (and, I should mention, pretty fun).
Solid vocal harmonies adorn every song in the tracklist, but those of “Number 73987,” the aforementioned “Too Wet to Plow,” “Lost and Lonely” and “Take Me to the Mountains” were some of my absolute favorites. It’s easy to get lost in the content here if you’re in the mood for something that is both rustic and contemporary enough to win the hearts of a disenfranchised country enthusiast, and as a bluegrass critic, I can’t recall the last time I was able to say as much about anything coming off the mainstream end of this genre. There’s an interesting movement among indie ‘grass players that you can definitely detect in the spirit of Carolina Blue’s latest work, and if it’s indicative of a larger trend growing outside of their scene, listeners across the world are going to benefit.
A surprisingly brooding bluegrass effort as fit for disciples of the genre as it is the typical country music fan as well, Carolina Blue’s performance in Take Me Back is absolutely one that I would recommend taking a peek at this autumn. Kicking off with “Grown Cold” and keeping our attention with the excitement of tunes like “Raining in Roanoke” and “March Around Jericho,” Take Me Back is a tough disc to put down once you’ve given it a chance on the stereo for the first time, and in a year that hasn’t left us with much to do other than listen to quality music, it’s a godsend for fans of American pastoral harmonies this season.
Kim Muncie