Allison de Groot & Rich Ruth

Another sterling album keeps up the flawless run from Rich Ruth. Following his two impeccable Third Man releases and jaunt with Spencer Cullum and Sean Thompson as Shrunken Elvis, this release finds Ruth in good company with clawhammer banjo player Alison de Groot. What began as a plan to produce an album for Allison spiraled into a full on collaboration, enmeshing her stringwork in a sparkling world of kosmiche synths and glass-capsuled textures. The record enters into a growing canon of folk albums that flirt with the lines between pastoral and prog, and, like his solo work, the album sews genres with a deft hand. The record moves from shimmering pieces that bounce strings through prisms and percolation to something more staid and stripped back without feeling like anything less than an embryonic journey.

There’s equal room for field recordings and orchestration. The former brings in a sense of meditative calm, filtering birdsong through the speakers while bringing Allison’s banjo to the forefront. Familiar faces give the record a larger feel further on, finding Ruth’s bandmate Cullum adding pedal steel alongside Parker James’ vibraphone, and Patrick M’Gonigle’s fiddle and mandolin. The assembled players thread through de Groot’s banjo runs, pushing the traditional further towards the ethereal. The record breathes. It bellows. It sighs. The clockwork curios thread a human touch through the kind of cosmic folk that can often feel otherworldly. Here, though, Ruth turns the record into a dizzying display of music and motion, an enveloping cocoon that transports the listener before it whispers away.

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