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By Brian Heisler
With the recent announcement of the breakup of Nickel Creek, fans turn to the individual members, and none is more active right now than Chris Thile. As one of the most brilliant musicians on the scene today, Thile continues to stretch the mandolin and the bluegrass sound into areas unseen before. The Nickel Creek mandolin player recently dove into his own work and has resurfaced with some very entertaining pieces.
Thile's squad of ringers making-up the backing band fills a resume like a rap sheet and fills the sound of the album even better. Among the laundry list of accredited affiliations, the band boasts both a former and current member of Leftover Salmon in Noam Pikelny on banjo and Greg Garrison on bass (respectively), Chris Eldridge of The Infamous Stringdusters on guitar, and Gabe Witcher of Jerry Douglas' touring band on fiddle. The five instrumentals on How to Grow A Woman from the Ground are heavily influenced by the musicians Thile surrounds himself with, and the resulting meshed sound is fantastic.
The initial track, "Watch 'at Breakdown," busts the album open from the start into a tasteful string dinner. Without taking a peek at the track listing before the first spin, the listener may be quite surprised or even strained in determining, "Is this a cover?" It turns out nearly a third of the songs on the album are indeed great twists on unexpected covers from The White Stripes' "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" to The Strokes' "Heart in a Cage." Whether it be for radio overplay or just a difference of taste in sound, I may be the only person in the nation yet to appreciate either of these two bands, but Thile's versions of the bands' songs come off as some of the best pieces of the album. Thile's unique and twangy voice is a great fit for "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," cracking into a falsetto on the high notes in the best vocals of the album.
Overall, the album has a general somber feeling to it. There seems to be a dark connotation following the life of Thile in the music. Both "Stay Away" and the Gillian Welch cover, "Wayside (Back in Time)," make reference to the separation from a loved one. However, for every slow track, Thile kicks it back up with a bright picking frenzy on another track. The song writing on How to Grow A Woman from the Ground is not the keystone of the artwork; instead it's the soul in Thile's voice and moreover the heart and intensity of the musicianship that give the album its power. It is evident that Thile has become one of the premier names in the art of the modern day mandolin. While Nickel Creek produced no less impressive work, the breakup of the band will only continue to reveal Thile's genius as he further promotes his own work. This is only the beginning of great things to come from a name that will become a staple among the live music crowd.
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