Black Twig Pickers: Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers

Sometime labelmates Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers finally team up for a record together. Unlike most Rose records, which while delicate and dark and beautiful, are also showcases for one of the most incredible guitar virtuosos playing these days, this collaboration is way more of a team effort. There are definitely moments where you can hear Rose doing his thing, but for the most part, he's part of the band here, and the rest of the Twig Pickers are pretty serious players themselves.

Guitar, banjo, fiddle, bass drum, harmonica, vocals and bones (!), the tracks here veer from wild campfire old school blue grass hoedowns to more darkly contemplative folk explorations, and pretty much every stop in between. Tone of intricate fingerpicking, the stringed instruments getting tangled up in flurries of rapid fire notes, the vocals wild and loose, in fact the whole recording is pretty loose, like they just got together and jammed, which who knows, could be just how this happened.

Folks looking for pure solo guitar Appalachia probably won't find what they're looking for, although elements surface throughout, but for folks into old timey blues, classic bluegrass, those Mississippi blues reissue lps, and the more rollicking tracks on past Rose records, this will totally hit the spot.

-- Aquarius