★★★★★
It's all about the songs. Sure, that's obvious, right? But you'd be surprised out often artists miss this essential point. Sadly, this happens far more often than it ought in the Americana and bluegrass fields. Too many times, bluegrass recordings impress the ears, while leaving the heart and soul cold and unmoved. However, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has been around so long, you'd think these musicians would simply be coasting atop their extensive success story by now...
- roughstock.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
It's been five years since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released an album. Though they haven't exactly been resting on their laurels, this interval between records isn't too surprising: After all, once a band's been together for 45 years, don't you think they'd get a little bored with it all? Listening to Speed of Life, the answer is "no freakin' way...
- www.the9513.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
For a group that beganin the '60s playing jug-band music, unplugging isn't really much of agamble, so it's not surprising that the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's laid-back soundis unaffected by their wooden instrumentation in Acoustic. They're alwayscompetent, with shimmering three-part harmonies and stellarmusicianship, but that doesn't compensate for their generallyforgettable songwriting. C
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
The Nity Gritty Dirt Band hasbeen turning out highly uneven albums in recent years, and Not Fade Away is noexception. The group builds up momentum with country rock and powerballadry but then throws it away with four cover tunes. If these guysweren't so old, you'd swear they were your more accomplished sock-hopband.
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
The DirtBand have enjoyed a big resurgence of popularity in recent years,with the multi-Grammy- winning success of their genre-spanning Willthe Circle Be Unbroken, Volume Two, and its intelligent follow-up,The Rest of the Dream. Now comes Live Two Five, a live album with a clever title toreflect the group's 25th anniversary. The material covers almost allof the band's career, from the organic folk-pop hits of "Mr...
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
The NGDB formed in summer of '66 as a notional way of "not working for a living". From McCabe's Guitar Store origins to the present day represents a major skive. Jeff Hanna remains as a link to the old days, and nowadays the Nits function as a repository for Americana. Special guests on this latest include the Scruggs family, Doc Watson, Willie Nelson and Tom Petty (adding vocals to "Goodnight Irene"), Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 triple album Will the Circle Be Unbroken changed the way rock fans listened to country music. Although groups like the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers paved the way for the Dirt Band, its supersession with C&W; giants removed from country the stigma of The Beverly Hillbillies. For perhaps the first time since the collapse of Sun Records, country was considered cool...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-03-21
★★★★★
It would be easy but unfair to accuse the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band of opportunism with the release of Will the Circle Be Unbroken Vol. III. Sure, the timing's pretty fortuitous in the wake of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and its attendant bluegrass/Americana enthusiasm. But the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was here first, and their third folk-country jamboree in as many decades isn't about to let you forget it...
- www.popmatters.com
2009-03-20
★★★★★
A public service by what is ordinarily a fairly weak-minded folk-rock aggregation, this three-record set unites six great traditional country singers--Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, Merle Travis, and Jimmy Martin (of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys) with old-time material so tried and true that even this unreconstructed urbanite has heard most of it before. But rarely with such easy pleasure...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-01-26
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