Pharis & Jason Romero
Album: A Passing Glimpse
Label: Lula
Tracks: 15
Website: www.jasonandpharis.com

There are some people that'll tell you that for a harmony to be spot on, it needs to be a blood harmony, that the natural instinct between siblings provides a harmony that can't be beat, actually it does hold up a lot of the time, but a lot of the times means there's gaps and the yearning vocal refrains of Pharis & Jason Romero pretty much plug one of those gaps.

The duo have only been playing together since 2007, but they feel like they've shared a life time of experiences together, but maybe that's a legacy of follow parallel paths a thousand or so miles apart, before meeting at a fiddle jam. Jason ended up relocating himself and his banjo business from California all the way to the wonderfully named, Horsefly, British Columbia.

Listening to "A Passing Glimpse you can only conclude that it was worth every yard of that long journey as this is one of the best old timey records you're going to hear in a very long while. It's an album that brings so many different elements together .

Apart from the already mentioned harmonies, the other real strength that comes across is the banjo playing. There must be something really satisfying about playing a banjo that you built yourself, especially if you've managed to avoid any synthetics during the process and produced such wonderful sounding instruments.

Traditional songs like "Cumberland Gap" and covers such as "Hillbilly Blues" and "Engine 143" give the album a familiar feel, but for me it's the original songs sprinkled through the album that give the whole a real zest. The instrumentation is sparse, but when combined with the voices, both apart and in harmony, it conspires to produce an album of real depth.

This is old timey and bluegrass as it should be, warm and welcoming, the album draws you towards the porch as surely as the lantern attracts the moths. It feels like time spent with a family friend having a session and if my family friends could play like this, I'd never leave the house.

Neil King