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The Wayfaring Strangers - This Train
By David McPherson
Release Date: September 16, 2003
As leader of this band, Matt Glaser – violinist and chairman of Berklee College of Music's string department - arranges many of the traditional songs the Wayfaring Strangers cover.
This Train is the band's follow up to the critically acclaimed 2001 debut Shifting Sands of Time. This sophomore record combines jazz, gospel, bluegrass, and world music into a medley of melodious sounds. The songs alternate between three distinct lead vocalists: Tracy Bonham, Ruth Ungar, and Aoife O'Donovan – these varied voices add to the originality of the 11 songs.
O'Donovan's otherworldly voice is best captured on the supple "When You Go Walking After Midnight", accompanied by Steve Gorn's bansuri playing – giving this bluegrass standard an Indian flavour.
This nine-piece band refuses to be pigeonholed into one particular genre of music; the Wayfaring Strangers break musical boundaries from one bar to another within a song let alone from one track to the next. While the band's first release explored the relationships between bluegrass, jazz, and klezmer, This Train adds global rhythms and the black gospel tradition to this mix.
The album opens with "This Train." The band takes this traditional gospel song and breathes new life into it by giving it a jazzy, bluegrass arrangement. The version of "Cluck Old Hen", that the band offers features frenetic fiddling and ends in a clamorous cacophony of sound that gives one the feeling that there's trouble in the henhouse.
From bluegrass standards made famous by Flatts and Scruggs to gospel numbers previously covered by the likes of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Wayfaring Strangers are a creative collective that give timeless pieces of music a fresh facelift by breaking down the traditional barriers that demarcate musical genres.
This Train is not now on Rounder Records.
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