Sawtooth Brothers – One More Flight
The idea that classic country and bluegrass sounds are a dead issue is laid to rest on the Sawtooth Brothers’ debut album, One More Flight. The eleven songs written and recorded for their first release have a meticulous artistic sensibility guiding their development that never rushes their slow blooming. Even the most rambunctious songs on One More Flight emerge with such consideration that it’s difficult to not applaud their almost surgical skill. The Birtzer and Moravec brothers bring ample talents together in a combined package brimming over with melody and a confident compositional hand. Nothing is ever overstated or laid on too thick. The various elements making One More Flight work are in seamless accord through the tracks and never stumble.
They get off to an audaciously clever start with the inventive and laugh out loud funny “Another Cliché”. It’s impossible to not admire their creative structuring of various every day axioms and clichés into a coherent, if subtly rueful, reflection on our daily dishonesties. The same creativity is at work on the album’s second song, “Country Road X”, but the band certainly spends more time on the arrangement than they do conveying any astonishingly witty lyrical message. The singing throughout One More Flight is uniformly excellent, but songs like “Country Road X” are great examples of how it succeeds, in no small part, thanks to the vocalist’s selectiveness in emphasizing certain elements above others while still attempting to communicate in an emotive, musical manner. “Summer All the Time” further reinforces this element with its exquisitely precise reading. There’s a great deal of nostalgia infusing a song like this, but it’s never overly sentimental and, instead, delivered in such a matter of fact way that it’s drained of its drama. “The River & You” turns the band back to the past, but this pastoral narrative is present in a completely modern fashion with flesh and blood narration and characters that go far beyond retro looking back. The interplay of guitar and fiddle here is particularly crucial.
Mandolin and guitar open “I Should Be Going” and this melancholy track is one of One More Flight’s late peaks. The meandering, foot-shuffling heart break that powers the song exhibitis the same sophistication that sets the rest of the album apart. The vocal, specifically, slides over the top of the arrangement with cool resignation that never descends into hysterics or melodrama. “One More Flight” is a powerhouse title track that, like a few other moments on the release, shows off the four piece’s potential for flexing surprising rock muscle. The vocal never overextends itself and shows an affinity for more demanding singing than before. One More Flight closes with the salutatory “Take Me Away”, a sensitive send off that embodies the band’s greatest attributes while still revealing another side of their musical identity. It finishes One More Flight on an extraordinarily upbeat and consistent note, but the entire album is a testament to how rounded and fully formed the band’s talents are even at the start.
YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcX1Rx-7jAQ
URL: http://www.sawtoothbrothers.com/
9 out of 10 stars.
Cyrus Rhodes