There really seems to be no end to Chris Thile’s talent. From the bluegrass wunderkind who released the astonishingly accomplished Leading Off aged 13 in 1994, Thile has moved on through Bach partitas, jazz duos and sophisticated pop, via a MacArthur Fellowship that officially declared him a genius, to replacing Garrison Keillor as host of popular radio programme A Prairie Home Companion.
Not surprisingly, since part of his remit was to write a song each week, an album has resulted from this latest enterprise. And not surprisingly, given the involvement of another mega-talent, Thomas Bartlett, pianist with Irish music masters The Gloaming, it’s wide ranging and frequently glorious.
The 10 songs Thile and Bartlett worked up from 19 candidates from the show are topical, tender, adventurous, enquiring and direct. At times, as on the solo voice and mandolin Balboa, it’s as if Thile is communicating personally with the listener in the grand radio tradition. Elsewhere, with the added voices of Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Guatemalan Gaby Moreno, Thile becomes a Brian Wilson for the Twitter age. Thank You, New York and Falsetto are great pop songs, stand-outs on an album that keeps calling listeners back.
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