ALBUM REVIEW: Bronwyn Keith-Hynes Steps Into the Spotlight With ‘I Built a World’
Nancy Posey
Posted On May 21, 2024
In her first solo album, I Built a World, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes creates an enticing landscape and allows listeners to join her there. Fresh from a Grammy win with Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway, Keith-Hynes demonstrates on this project that her vocal ability is a match for her award-winning fiddling.
From the opener “Can’t Live Without Love” to the title song that closes the album, Keith-Hynes has assembled a collection of songs that showcases her musical best. She has assembled an all-star lineup of musicians for the project. On most of the tracks, Bryan Sutton plays guitar; Jerry Douglas, dobro; Dominick Leslie, mandolin; Wesley Corbett, banjo; and Jeff Picker, bass. Other well-known performers — including Dierks Bentley, Jason Carter, and Darrell Scott — make guest appearances as well.
The up-tempo “Can’t Live Without Love,” featuring Molly Tuttle and Sam Bush on harmony vocals, is followed by “Up for Losing Sleep,” which suggests a more positive channel for insomnia.
The album shifts moods with “Angel Island,” Peter Rowan’s bittersweet story of the immigrant experience on the West Coast entry point into America for many Asian immigrants. Keith-Hynes’ haunting fiddle opens this narrative of a Chinese “paper bride” kept waiting while her future husband ventures out to find his fortune in gold. Keith-Hynes is joined by Scott on harmony vocals on the refrain, the words written on the wall by the bride before her disappearance: “One more lifetime / loving you.”
That bittersweet mood is echoed on “Trip Around the Sun,” a wistful song for those birthdays when one feels inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The evolving lyrics of each refrain, shifting from revolution to revelation and then resolution, move from recognition of the fragility of life to a resignation to “just enjoy my ride on this trip around the sun.”
Amid a bluegrass sound that ranges from traditional to more modern, an underlying theme to the album is a search for answers. With a lilting melody and clever lyrics, “Riddle” suggests that mystery can remain even under perfect conditions:
It takes two kinds of weather to bring conditions together
Make a rainbow willing to shine
And that keeps things real simple but there’s a piece to the riddle
The pot of gold is still hard to find.
“Answers,” with its more tender tone, echoes the idea of trying to “get it right” while “out chasing answers / that have never been mine to know.”
The album offers a musical variety that highlights the ensemble of players, as well as Keith-Hynes’ strength on vocals. “Lonesome Whippoorwill” delivers classic lonesome bluegrass, and the band pulls out all the stops on “Scotty’s Hoedown,” the sole instrumental, featuring Keith-Hynes’ range of fiddle licks.
The lyrics on the final track, “I Built a World,” may claim “Today I built a world that’s only for me,” but listeners have been right there with her the whole time.
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ I Built a World is out May 24 on Sugar Petunia Records.
