City of Refuge

Though she’s a recent addition to their catalogue, Rounder Records could present banjoist, vocalist, and songwriter Abigail Washburn as an embodiment of the label’s approach to contemporary music. Her instrumental approach and significant aspects of her writing and arranging are based in bluegrass, but she enhances her songs with a thoroughly modern potpourri of Celtic, country, and even indie pop elements. Her virtuosity in clawhammer style on a trio of banjos is matched by a team of players on a variety of instruments that include not only the bluegrass stable of fiddle, guitar, pedal steel, and bass but also viola, cello, piano, horns, percussion, Chinese guzheng and a moody electric guitar in the hands of jazz wizard Bill Frisell. All instruments are tastefully deployed, Washburn’s particularly well on ‘Corner Girl’, a quiet and charming portrait. Her voice is breathy, girlish and rather evocative of Natalie Merchant: an alluring conduit for the entrancingly poetic and teasingly mind-bending lyrics, which look at love and life from unexpected perspectives. She’s closely partnered in vocal harmonies by multi-instrumentalist Kai Welch, and elsewhere by a pair of throat singers and a gospel-ish choir.

Washburn makes her unique repertoire sound even fresher with her sinuous change-ups of phrasing – lingering on or repeating words and phrases, and even indulging in an occasional yodel. The eye-popping, globe-girdling collage on the album’s cover (by artist Erica Harris) accurately augurs the enchantment and magic of its musical content.