Lonely Heartstring Band Does Bluegrass Unbounded

The five young talents in Boston-based group The Lonely Heartstring Band tell stories with traditional bluegrass instrumentation and multipart harmonies. But that doesn’t make them creatively dependent on hardcore bluegrass norms, as heard on their folk-honoring yet forward-thinking new album Smoke & Ashes.

Opening track “Reverie” makes it clear this isn’t a typical bluegrass album by beginning with a lush piano accompaniment. It’s not a piano part you’d hear in an old country church or Deep South juke joint, mind you. Instead, a bluegrass album boldly starts out sounding like orchestral pop. Keyboard instrumentation lets listeners know they’re in for some surprises, just as the usually folksy band Cicada Rhythm teased by launching into 2018 album Anywhere I Go with garage-style organ accompaniment. Even when traditional bluegrass instruments kick in, the song remains a pastiche of classic (and classical) music beyond typical Appalachian touchstones.

As the album’s sound drifts southward for “Borderlands” and “The Other Side,” The Lonely Heartstring Band remain atypical bluegrass pickers. Those songs and others borrow cues from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and other acts bold enough in the 1970s to narrow the unnecessary gaps between longhairs, country singers, hardcore bluegrass practitioners, and folk singer-songwriters. In a modern context, it sounds like a case of musicians open to embracing their parents’ record collections while maneuvering a genre you never hear on oldies and classic rock stations.

Think Laurel Canyon, not Jerusalem Ridge, once the band’s multipart harmonies on “Only Fallen Down” and other selections start sounding a lot like the heyday of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Press materials point out that the band’s members took notice of Beatlemania at formative ages. That might explain the St. Pepper’s-like band name, but the group still sounds more like a cross between bluegrass and the CSNY family of bands (The Byrds, Manassas, etc.) than anything involving the four Liverpudlian lads.

There are also traces of Paul Simon, with Art Garfunkel and as a solo act, in the sound of a band known to bust out a cover of “Graceland.” That strand of the band’s musical genome becomes obvious on the poetic, five-and-a-half-minute album closer “Last Refrain,” complete with a singalong chant resembling the familiar “lie-la-lie” from “The Boxer.” It’ll make listeners hope the band knows a bluegrass arrangement for “A Hazy Shade of Winter.”

Despite refusing to limit their sound or rely on lyrical clichés, The Lonely Heartstring Band can still be summed up as a modern bluegrass unit. George Clements (guitar, vocals), Charles Clements (bass, vocals), Patrick M’Gonigle (fiddle, vocals), Maddie Witler (mandolin, vocals), and Gabe Hirshfeld (banjo) blend individual talents and distinct voices while using old-time traditions as a general guide, not blinders separating their songwriting from more popular influences.