A Sublime Sound

There’s nothing sweeter or more serene than a bluegrass ballad played with absolute authenticity. So credit Kenny and Amanda Smith with a new album that provides a baker’s dozen. Winners of the 2003 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year Award, they come to the fold with individual credentials — he with half a dozen years in the Lonesome River Band, and she with a sacred background that included singing in church choirs and talent shows and, much more recently, a 2014 IBMA award for Best Female Vocalist of the Year Award. Regardless, when they merge their talents — like they did their personal lives — the results are absolutely blissful.

Happily too, it certainly doesn’t take much to convince. Unbound finds the couple’s sweetly sincere sentiments ringing with absolute clarity in each of these songs, and while none of the tracks are originals, they bring a purity and purpose that suggests they are sung from the heart. Amanda’s vocals — sweet, sincere and given to an emotional embrace — keeps the conviction intact, and when her guitarist husband Kenny steps to the mike for a solo spotlight, as on “Tea Party “ and “Preaching My Own Funeral,”  it’s similarly sublime. This is genuine heartland music with a contemporary tone, but regardless of how it’s classified, the inherent beauty imbued in such songs as “You Know That I Would,” “Nightbird,” “Something Missing” and “Hills of Logan County” makes any need to categorize purely moot.

Granted, bluegrass is generally upbeat and free blown, but with the exception of an occasional ramble like”Wherefore and Why” or “Reaching Out,” these are offerings of a less complicated kind. It’s near impossible not to be struck by the Smiths’ charms, which begs the question of why one would even try?