Album Review: Jerry Douglas, ‘The Set’
The Set, Jerry Douglas’ first album in seven years, offers a master class in tune writing and Dobro playing by a musician’s musician. Joining Douglas on the album are Daniel Kimbro on bass, Christian Sedelmyer on fiddle, and Mike Seal on guitar. Douglas and the band take us deep into each of the tracks on this setlist, exploring every nuance of each tune and song. On some tracks, the group leads us through the shadows of haunting musical landscapes, while on others the musicians glide joyfully through soothing musical settings.
The album opens with the undulating rhythms of the medley “Gone to Fortingal/Wired to the Moon.” Sedelmyer’s fiddle weaves around Douglas’ Dobro in the somber introductory phrase; underneath they develop a slightly off-kilter rhythm that soon evolves into a galloping, full throttle Celtic reel, before the tune’s pace slows once again to the opening movement. Seal’s crisp leads lay a beautiful bed of sound in the bright jazz tune “Renee,” which Seal penned; as the guitar strides ahead, Douglas and Sedelmyer play in concentric circle around each other.
Aoife O’Donovan provides ethereal note-for-note vocals to Douglas’s Dobro on the melancholy “What Might Have Been,” which evokes regret with its brooding instrumentation. Douglas’ soulful vocals convey the singer’s yearning to “be home every night” on the chugging, New Orleans-meets-bluegrass cover of the old soul classic “Something You Got,” penned in 1961 by the R&B artist Chris Kenner. Sedelmyer leads off the exquisite “Deacon’s Waltz,” his own composition, capturing the pining sadness as well as the promise of hope often at the heart of waltzes. In notes that spiral ever higher, Douglas transforms George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and he, Seal, Kimbro, and Sedelmyer—each artist has a chance to stretch out—open new dimensions of the song.
Everything that Jerry Douglas touches turns to gold, and on The Set he has mined some truly brilliant nuggets. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another seven years for another album as stunning as this one.
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The Set is available HERE
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