Rating:
Genre:
Country
Release Date: 04/08/2008
The
Gibson Brothers play a low-key, emotional style of bluegrass with some country and early rock influences. Their close sibling harmonies place them firmly within the bluegrass continuum while their fine songwriting helps expand the music's parameters.
"Picker's Blues" is a good example, a tune that talks about music making with a combination of pride and self-effacing humor. The instrumental prowess of the brothers and their band belies the modesty they bring to the lyric when they sing "It's all been done before..." Two voices, a simple bassline,and spare guitar chords accent
"Lonely Me, Lonely You," a classic of close harmony singing, with
Eric Gibson's guitar solo adding a beautiful jazzy touch to the arrangement.
"It's a Long Way Down" is a perfect song of disillusion and heartache, another country-influenced track. The singer wallows in his heartache and warns his departed lover of life's perils while the music bubbles happily in the background.
"Iron & Diamonds" is an autobiographical song about growing up near Lyon Mountain in the Adirondacks, a place obsessed with mining and baseball.
Eric Gibson's banjo and
Clayton Campbell's fiddle give the story of hard labor and broken dreams a morose, funereal mood. The tunes the Brothers choose to cover are always given surprising new arrangements. They make over
Tom Petty's
"Cabin Down Below" into a down-home celebration of country living while
Steve Earle's
"The Other Side of Town" is acoustic honky tonk music at its best, with
Junior Barber's resonator guitar adding pedal steel-like fills. The brothers give
Julie Miller's sardonic
"Somewhere Trouble Don't Go" a bluegrass bounce that takes some of the sting out its dark lyric.
"A World So Full of Love," by
Roger Miller and
Faron Young sports a great brokenhearted lyric and some clever wordplay.
The Gibson's harmonies make the song a winner.
~j. poet, All Music Guide
;)
Listen
