Thanks for Listening

Fans of the long-running weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion may already be familiar with some of these songs: Chris Thile took over from the show's creator, Garrison Keillor, as host in 2016. Now renamed Live From Here, its tradition of penning topical songs each week, alongside the old-time, traditional bluegrass and hokum it is loved for, has been continued by Thile. This collection of ten songs was written for the show – before, during and after the election of Donald Trump. Lyrics across the album are by turns celebratory about the more enlightened corners of the US and self-deprecating about liberal values, in a wry and overly subtle fashion. The overall effect is a little like reading a columnist in The Observer while sipping a cappuccino. ‘I Made This for You’ is a good case in point. Like pretty much every Chris Thile song ever, it's a tour de force of melodic twists, beautiful vocal harmonies, clever arrangements and jaw-droppingly good mandolin playing. But the sentiments of the lyrics – by the sounds of it, an affirmation that the song is for everyone, even those whose opinions Thile doesn’t agree with – seems rather a cop-out. The music is impressive: always pretty, often elegiac sounding and largely quite mellow: an eclectic mix that recalls Pink Floyd on ‘Feedback Loop’ and Stevie Wonder on ‘Elephant in the Room’, and which frequently displays the melodic nous of prime Paul McCartney, Randy Newman or the UK's Elbow. But the lack of a sense of anger, the absence of a nailing of colours to a mast, seems odd in today's political climate, and leaves a strange vacuum at this album's centre.