Description
If you close your eyes when you put the needle down on Sarah Jarosz’s third album, you’ll swear you’re listening to Joni Mitchell–especially her Hejira album, one moment–Diana Krall’s smoky and seductive voice at another moment, or Maria Muldaur’s sultry, languorous vocals in the next moment. Yet, it’s Mitchell that Jarosz most resembles in her complex songwriting, as well as in her deft arrangements in which cello, violin, mandolin, dobro, guitar, steel guitar, and banjo circle and spin intricate webs around each other and her vocals. Violinist Alex Hargreaves and cellist Nathaniel Smith join Jarosz to create a multilayered sound that’s densely textured and that crosses the boundaries of many genres only to illustrate their similarities. She wrote or co-wrote nine of the eleven songs on the album—Jarosz interprets Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate” and Joanna Newsom’s “The Book of Right-On” in dead-on yet strikingly fresh ways—and she is joined by an all-star cast of musicians including Dan Dugmore, Jerry Douglas, Darrell Scott, Chris Thile, Viktor Krauss, Jedd Hughes, and Aiofe O’Donovan.