Cahalen Morrison & Eli West
Album: I'll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.cahalenandeli.com

Any album that starts out with a track titled Fiddlehead Ferns has to be fine by me – but as it turns out there’s no intentional reference to the Mike Heron song Puppies after all, instead the song’s a banjo-flecked, evocatively poetic meditation on love. It’s a vital example of Cahalen’s songwriting that shows but one side to his versatility and maturity in that role, attributes which are to be found in abundance on this, the duo’s third album release.

The performance mode, as throughout, is entirely authentic down-home, that of true old-time mountain music. This quality of essential, complete truth in intent and execution is what so impressed me – and hordes of fellow music-lovers – on encountering Cahalen and Eli’s debut CD The Holy Coming Of The Storm just a few short years back. The sustained, intense chemistry between the men is if anything even more extraordinary now, and is evidenced not only in their tightly woven close-harmony vocals but also in the responsiveness and flexibility of their instrumental chops.

The already impressive instrumental skills of the duo themselves (on banjo, bouzouki, mandolin, dobro and guitar) are augmented on this new disc by a small handful of hand-picked musicians (Ryan Drickey and Brittany Haas on fiddles and Erin Youngberg on bass), all under the expert guidance of producer Tim O’Brien (who also fetches out his trusty mandolin and bouzouki for the sessions). The mixture of songs this time brings in staples like the gospel standard Green Pastures, the Louvin Brothers’ Lorene and Alice Gerrard’s tender-yet-powerful Voices Of Evening to offset Cahalen‘s own fine compositions, which themselves embody all the hallmarks of familiar bluegrass and old-time numbers, and yet they are often (surprisingly) darkly contemporary. Songs like can’t be judged anything but masterly, and these are brilliantly complemented by a sparky, trickily-metred instrumental cut (Ritzville/Steamboats On The Saskatchewan) that’s strategically placed roughly midway through the album.

The playing is stunning, and Eli’s special forte is his skilful arrangements that, as some critics have observed, owe almost as much to early jazz as they do to bluegrass greats like Bill Monroe. And Bruce Molsky’s soundbite liner note identifies Woody Guthrie and Bob Wills as “lurking back there somewhere” too – and I can hear these, sure, on cuts like Down In The Lonesome Draw and Natural Thing To Do respectively. This exceptional, truly wonderful album is crammed with subtle delights, and is definitely destined for my end-of-year best-of list already.

David Kidman