Chatham County Line - Wildwood (Yep Roc)

The hardest trick for a roots-rock/pop, americana, or alt.country band is to take something that’s that traditional—what’s a hundred years?—and try to make it sound contemporary instead of boringly old-timey, like a singing group playing on Disney’s fake-as-folksy Main Street. And this Raleigh, NC group has been doing just that for seven years and now five albums. Oh, their music is totally, typically, tacitly traditional, and you’d know that even without noticing the shoutout inherent in “Ghost of Woody Guthrie .” A steady stream of bluegrass is dominated a dozen times by banjo player Chandler Holt ’s fluid pickin’, although trademark four-part-harmonies hit home more like the folk-rock late ‘60s than such ancient folk legends, more Buffalo Springfield/Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, The Beatles (whose George Harrison has his “All Things Must Pass” lyric quoted in “Ringing in My Ears,” along with similar snippets from contemporaries Smokey Robinson & the Miracles , George Jones , Paul Simon , and Willie Nelson , as well as Hank Williams and either Buddy Holly ’s or Johnny Burnette ’s “Lonesome Tears,” giving inescapable proof of their more ‘50s to ‘70s influence), and Gram Parsons. (In fact, “Blue Jay Way,” interestingly not a cover of the Harrison Beatles’ tune, sounds a lot like a Parsons’ Flying Burrito Brothers-type tune, as does “Crop Comes In,” which could pass for a Fleet Foxes recording!). Aside from all this namedropped, coming-clean direct inspiration, though, the group’s tunes and harmonies are just a helper to the main dish, which is the kind-boy vocals of sweet Dave Wilson , who can even pull off singing to a newborn in a cradle without making one bust out the vomit jar (and I say that as a parent!). With help from egregious, welcome fiddle playing, and some ever-signifying lap steel, Wilson manages to evoke the sort of lonely longing that’s always made country-based idioms sink deepest, even pulling off a certain Urban Cowboy dislocation on “Alone in New York.” (Surely, Ratso Rizzo will help this new Joe fish out of water out.) It’s just another quietly impressive aspect from this consistent throwback group. (reyeyeusa.com)