Album Review: Sierra Hull, ‘A Tip Toe High Wire’
On her new album A Tip Toe High Wire mandolinist and guitarist Sierra Hull dazzles us with her balancing act as she moves in sure-footed fashion across a high wire of bluegrass, folk, jazz, and old time music. Her first album in five years, and the first that she’s released independently, features her touring band—Shaun Richardson on guitar, Avery Merritt on fiddle, Erik Coveney on bass, and Mark Raudabaugh on drums—as well as friends such as Aoife O’Donovan, Béla Fleck, and Tim O’Brien, among others.
The album kicks off with the swirling syncopation of “Boom,” a languorous jazz-inflected piece in which each musician stretches out on the instrumental bridge. Steely Dan meets bluegrass on this opening track. Cascading layers of mandolin and clawhammer banjo flow beneath the whirling rhythms of “Come Out of My Blues,” and Merritt’s fleet-fingered fiddling propels the song into a tarantella-like old-time reel. On the fiery instrumental “Lord, That’s a Long Way” Hull’s fingers fly up and down the frets of her mandolin as she kicks off a frantically fun scamper on which guitar, fiddle, bass, and percussion dive, dart, and tumble around and over one another. The percussive “Let’s Go,” featuring O’Donovan, mimics the rhythm of manic energy of rolling down the road from one show, while the bright bluegrass ballad “Truth Be Told” celebrates the beauty of daily life and all it small wonders. Fleck on banjo joins Hull on mandolin on the lively instrumental “E Tune” in which the two explore every thematic variation of the key of E, while the softly humming “Redbird” rides on the beauty of Hull’s crystalline vocals. The shimmering old-time folk ballad “Spitfire,” featuring Lindsey Lou, is an ode to Hull’s beloved grandmother, the “queen of the tip toe high wire.”
Sierra Hull just keeps getting better and better, and A Tip Toe High Wire showcases her sparkling vocals, her instrumental savvy, and her lyrical brilliance.
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More information about A Tip Toe High Wire is available HERE
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