- Record Label: Sugar Hill
- Release Date: Jun 21, 2011
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UncutSep 14, 2011It represents Lauderdale travelling full circle, coming 30 years after his first recordings with bluegrass legend Roland white, but with a few of the flourishes he brought to Elvis Costello's recent touring outfit The Sugarcanes. [Oct 2011, p.91]
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Sep 8, 2011Add Lauderdale's terrific musical stylings, the twangy expressiveness of his singing, and his backing ensemble's crack playing, and what results is a classic bluegrass sound that is yet just a turn off-center.
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Sep 8, 2011Stretching out with a few more solos would have given listeners a better bang for the buck, and made it more of a true bluegrass record. But if they make a few more albums, Lauderdale and Hunter may well end up attaining the almost mythical status of some of America's great writing teams. That's how good they are together.
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Sep 8, 2011The turquoise-hued bluegrass offered here is anything but generic--it's specialty-shop stuff.
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Sep 8, 2011Few current bluegrass acts sing with the command and authority Lauderdale brings to his performances, and fewer still have a set of songs at their disposal as good as what Lauderdale and Hunter have composed for Reason and Rhyme, and it's another impressive installment in what's becoming one of the most interesting partnerships in roots music today.
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Sep 8, 2011Together, Hunter and Lauderdale straddle what Ralph Stanley calls "mountain music" and a contemporary ethos with phenomenal ease.
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Sep 8, 2011There's nothing to quite match Hunter's collaboration with Jerry Garcia on Friend of the Devil, perhaps, but the surreal Tiger and the Monkey, the lazy shuffle of Jack Dempsey's Crown, and the witty, bad-tempered old-timer's song Don't Give a Hang are far more original than most bluegrass offerings.