From Amazon.com
Gone, just like a country pie
Album Rating: (3 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: I like this album a lot more than I did Frissell's Gone Just Like a Train. If your idea of country music is Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Dylan's Nashville Skyline and Van Morrison's Pay the Devil, you will like this album. I do not disagree with the reviewer who said that this was a record for the easy-listening country-jazz audience. This music fits in very well in my collection of Dylan, Van Morrison, Grateful Dead and Tom Waits. I listen to these kinds of artists, but when I want more of an instrumental country flavor this disc slides into the mix quite nicely.
Country Feng Shui
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: The essential elements that are needed to blend an amalgam rarely understood as eclectic music, are only available to gifted alchemist that have mastered and gone beyond that, which is commonly coined popular. Bill Frisell is such an alchemist, turning lead into gold with an intuitive knowledge and mastery of what is ear glitter.
If you are in need of a much deserved break from your quest from the labors of connoisseurship, placed this CD first in the 300 multi disc player, so that you don't forget it's geography when you press the decompress switch.
More Fretboard Magic as the Master Conquers the Unknown
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: In fact, I'm sure Frisell knew *exactly* what he was doing with this Who's Who of ace Nashvilleines, even if it was a totally new one on me. Heck, I thought I'd discovered a new 'secret' maestro to worship outside the roar of the crowd.
Apart from Frisell's album with Ginger Baker, this is the one I play to my fellow gigsters just to smirk when they go "Who IS that guy?"
A great sound, enhanced by non-pareil musicians: the incomparable Jerry Douglas whose dobro playing sets the standard for others to be judged by; the siren-voiced Robin Holcomb with an impeccable handling of Neil Young's 'One of These Days'; bassist Viktor Krauss and Adam Steffey in surprisingly muscular mandolin form.
I would not have placed this as Frisell's field of forte, but that wiley genius just keeps surprising and pleasing me with effortless and genial ownership of anything he works his fretboard magic on.
A brilliant piece of work!
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: I read the negative reviews of this record from the "Berklee jazz defenders of the faith" and it makes me sad. How can you not appreciate this collection of work? First, he's got the cream of the bluegrass crop on this record and every one of them delivers. Secondly, he doesn't make the mistake of trying to outplay them. In fact my only problem with this record is that he lays back a little too much. Bill Frisell is a musical alchemist worthy of high praise and we can only hope that he continues to redefine musical categories right in the face of the elitests who deride him.
Nashville.
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: This is an incredible album. Listening to Nashville while driving through the country is an experience without which one's life should be considered incomplete. The musicianship is the key to this album - and by musicianship I do not mean technical virtuosity (which, however, all the musicians here do indeed posess) but rather the taste, subtlety, and emotion which make listening to this album a truly fulfilling experience. Bill Frisell's electric guitar has just about the sweetest tone I think I've ever heard out of a non-acoustic instrument (his acoustic playing is great, too, of course) and without the aid of any of the effects which he employs in many of his other works, he achieves an incredibly wide range of sounds (the pedal-steel sound on "Will Jesus Wash..." for instance). Jerry Douglas is also at his best on Nashville - far removed from the show-offy, speed-without-substance playing that often plagues bluegrass virtuosos - contributing tasteful and lyrical dobro work which displays the incredibly voice-like possibilities of the instrument. In fact, this lyrical quality is the most striking aspect of all of the playing on the album --- it's a bit of a stretch I guess, but I would compare the lyricism of Nashville's musicians to various Eastern traditions stemming from vocal music associated with instruments like the sarangi in India, the shakuhachi in Japan, the kamancech in Iran, and flamenco singing (to name a few). The compositions are all wonderfully simple and satisfying. The overall effect of the album is something like that of Miles Davis's "Kind Of Blue" and Ghazal's "As Night Falls on the Silk Road": all three albums defy categorization and bring the listener to a distinct place which can be constantly revisited without becoming stale - always yielding new discoveries. This is great music - some of the greatest ever recorded.
Purchases
1 Gimme a Holler
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