• Mountain Heart – Road That Never Ends: The Live Album

    Artist:
    Album:
    Jewly Hight Posted On January 1, 2008
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    Mountain Heart has long had a perfectly good thing going: a crisp, smooth sound, nimble musicianship (notably fiddler Jim Van Cleve, banjoist Barry Abernathy and mandolinist Adam Steffey), and a repertoire heavily weighted toward gospel. Sometime between 2006’s Wide Open and this live disc, they plucked vocalist/pianist/guitarist Josh Shilling from a funk and soul band in North Carolina and expanded to a sextet, injecting their sound with an R&B flavor. Shilling sings less through his head than his throat, and gravitates toward cascading ad-libs and supple vibrato more naturally than high lonesome harmony, though he can harmonize, too. He contributes a straight blues original (“It Works Both Ways”) and performs the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post”, somewhat strangely, solo on piano. The new blend, light on gospel fare, works best on hard-driving songs such as the title track and country ballads such as Shilling’s “Who’s The Fool Now”.




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