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They hit hard and they hit fast, with half of the songs here clocking in at two minutes or less, but they also hit sweet, with layers of boy-girl harmonies and drizzles of horn section.
It is difficult to make lush pastoral pop like this without going completely overboard into schmalz territory, but this band manages quite well, carefully draping their orchestral tendencies over a solid base of interesting songs.
This extensive 100-song collection highlights a song from each year of the last century and delivers it with a bluegrass tinge and Stampfel’s distinctive yawping … it’s not pleasing to everyone, but it’s hard to argue with the encyclopedic choices.
A return, and the word to use is "unabated." Their pummeling approach may seem to lack nuance, but it's not about how the punches are landing, it's about the pauses in between that make this measured approach to aggression particularly satisfying.
The guitar and bass strings are vibrating cosmically, the drums eat up the miles, an ethereal chorus swirls about. It's not a new formula, but it's done very well, and if you need to drive for sixty miles without noticing the time go by, here you go.
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