★★★★★
In 2014, the notion that a bluegrass band can swim into genres outside the realm dictated by their instruments isn't breaking news. Yonder Mountain String Band are kings of the jamband scene, transcending the obligatory "bluegrass booking" at summer festivals. Railroad Earth have fully embraced an earthy, rocking sound. Or take a look at the up-and-coming Rumpke Mountain Boys, who've dubbed their frantic, liquored sound "trashgrass...
- www.relix.com
2014-05-03
★★★★★
This Nashville quintet has made it a habit of pushing outside its bluegrass roots by, among other things, hiring a hip-hop producer to work on their last album, sporadically embellishing their sound with non-string instruments such as organ and rearranging rock songs from U2 and the Police to make them more, well rootsy. They retreat somewhat on those impulses for this, the band's fifth studio release...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2014-04-04
★★★★★
The Infamous Stringdusters are a bluegrass band who take traditional bluegrass and old-timey music and use it as a launching pad to explore other, more improvisational, free-flowing forms. It's a bit much to tag it as "bluejazz," but the monicker does convey some sense of the band's more experiemental leanings. On the flip side, though, there is plenty of familiar-sounding fare to be had, with rock-solid 4/4 beats, heart-tugging warbling and fingerpicking in plenty...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-03-12
★★★★★
The Infamous Stringdusters traffic in a particularly gripping style of bluegrass, and listening to their new album, Silver Sky, is like sitting on the edge of your seat at the end of a great suspense flick. The band's instrumental work, already intensely dramatic, is magnified here by the production style of Billy Hume (Nas, Ludacris, Lil Jon, Nelly). The vocals are mixed clearly and intimately, assuring that the listener is absorbed in the songs...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2012-11-12
★★★★★
Leave it to these newgrassers to push their ever expanding envelope by hiring hip hop producer Billy Hume (Nas, Ludacris) for knob twiddling assistance on this double disc (studio/live) re-release. Don't worry though, there's no rapping. The quintet sticks to the bluegrass basics with only unplugged banjo, dobro, fiddle, bass and guitar as instrumentation, but blurs the often rigid lines of their genre by pushing gently into light funk, pop, reggae, jam, folk and even jazz...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2012-10-22
★★★★★
High Country Everything evolves, including music. Even genres like bluegrass, whose very foundation is tradition itself, can't escape the effect of time and change. On their most recent release, Silver Sky, The Infamous Stringdusters are embracing that idea and allowing their gradual evolution toward newgrass to fully take hold. The Nashville, Tenn...
- www.relix.com
2012-05-24
★★★★★
High Country The Infamous Stringdusters' fourth album--and first release on their own High Country label--We'll Do It Live boasts 13 tracks culled from four shows on this past year's spring tour. The sextet busts out acoustic bluegrass favorites from stops at hallowed venues like New York's Bowery Ballroom and Burlington, Vt.'s Higher Ground as well as in Charlottesville and Falls Church, Va...
- www.relix.com
2011-12-29
★★★★★
Dusting is a gentle thing involving feathers and tiny particles floating woozily in shafts of sunlight, but that visual has no place in the music of The Infamous Stringdusters. What this Nashville sextet offers is more of a string band assault, conjuring images of sweatbeads and calloused fingertips...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2010-05-01
★★★★★
The Infamous Stringdusters took just ten days to record their third album Things That Fly. That's astonishing considering this is one of the best bluegrass albums of the year. But this sextet knows how to make a killer album. They've been doing that since their debut Fork in the Road."All the Same" starts off like a bluegrass version of Damien Rice's "Volcano...
- www.ink19.com
2010-04-29
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