NY Daily News on Chatham County Line

Here’s the story:

Bluegrass musicians play hard. They pluck their mandolins, finger their banjos and saw on the necks of their fiddles with taut and dexterous digits.

They have no choice in the matter, since their genre disfavors drummers, making the melody men provide their own percussion.

Chatham County Line conforms to this bluegrass tenet. The group boasts no stick man. With playing this muscular, who needs one?

But that’s hardly the whole story. Again, on its fourth album, which hits stores today, CCL contrasts forceful playing with some of the softest vocals and prettiest tunes on the scene today. It’s a lovely album, blurring the line between bluegrass instrumentation and alt-country songwriting. Any fan of acts like the Jayhawks, Wilco and Son Volt will adore the mix.

In a sense, this has always been true. CCL never wanted to be an orthodox bluegrass band, though they’ve got the chops. Original songwriting has always been as important to them, ever since they began in arty Asheville, N.C., around 2000.

They’ve put out their albums in fairly quick succession – nearly one a year. The latest brings them together with someone who has produced them before, former dB Chris Stamey. A jangle-pop touchstone, Stamey seems to have encouraged the band’s most melodic side.

Only two bluegrass instrumentals turn up: the bracing “Clear Blue Sky” and the more prim “Paige.” Otherwise, sweetness rules, both in the fluidity of the tunes and in the voice of singer Dave Wilson, whose tones can recall the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris.

Lyrically, CCL often writes about being torn between two poles: lovers, in “The Carolinian,” or lifestyles, in “Country Boy/City Boy.” They go for something more strident in “Birmingham Jail,” which addresses white supremacy in the ’60s, and “Whipping Boy,” in which one lover carps about being bullied by the other.

Otherwise, there’s a great gentility to “IV,” not to mention some of the best original bluegrass writing this side of Alison Krauss and Union Station.