(2018) Nathan Bowles - Plainly Mistaken

Review: 
The daring banjo player and singer Nathan Bowles opens his fourth album with a cover of “Now If You Remember,” written by the seven-year-old Jessica Constable and first recorded 40 years ago by popstar-turned-folkie Julie Tippetts. It’s an interlude on Tippetts’ Sunset Glow, but for Bowles, it is an overture, almost like a last-week-on recap that runs before your favorite TV show. “Now if you remember, we were talking about God and you,” Bowles sings in a hushed monotone, his words buttressed by a prismatic riff split by piano and banjo. The cover slyly summarizes his first three albums in order to prepare us for Plainly Mistaken’s departure while reframing his catalog (and maybe even a century of American roots music?): God and you might just be the true subjects of every folk song that Bowles or anyone else has ever played. 
Though Plainly Mistaken is rooted in specific musical traditions, these nine songs are deeply irreverent toward those traditions, too. As a banjo player, Bowles eschews the rocket-fueled runs of bluegrass players like Earl Scruggs in favor of a modified clawhammer technique that stylistically and spiritually pulls from the likes of John Fahey and Billy Faier. Rather than pluck and strum, Bowles hammers and pounds. The banjo is “a drum with strings on it. I tend to play everything percussively,” as he told Bandcamp. (Bowles has long played drums for Steve Gunn.) That’s most evident on romps like “Elk River Blues” (originally by West Virginia fiddler Ernie Carpenter) and the Bowles original “Fresh & Fairly So,” both of which move with the loping energy of a walk down a deserted gravel road. 
That’s due in part to the rhythm section of Bowles’ new trio, featuring drummer Rex McMurry of Cave and bassist Casey Toll of Mount Moriah. Loose and versatile, more interested in breaking the songs down rather than keeping time, they constantly reshape and reshade Bowles’ banjo themes.
Tracklist: 
01 - Now If You Remember.flac 
02 - The Road Reversed.flac 
03 - Umbra.flac 
04 - Elk River Blues.flac 
05 - Ruby ; In Kind I.flac 
06 - Girih Tiles.flac 
07 - Fresh & Fairly So.flac 
08 - In Kind II.flac 
09 - Stump Sprout.flac 

Summary: 
Country: USA 
Genre: alternative folk