Quantcast

Call for Feature Essays About Any Aspect of Popular Culture, Present or Past

Music
cover art

Jerks of Grass

Come On Home

(FM; US: 15 Jul 2008; UK: Unavailable)

Jerks of Grass is a bluegrass band, which means that at least one of the musicians has a banjo. It also means that we’re treated to a particular kind of talent: the kind that feels no shame in letting you know how good it is. Bluegrass is generous. When these musicians push their instruments as far as they’ll go they don’t hide it. There’s no gentlemanly veneer of modesty or concealment. When the banjo player goes so sharp and high in “Twin Peaks” that the instrument is gobbling with effort he lets us hear every cluck of tension in the string, and when he dips low in “Foggy Mountain Special” we get every hammocky boing. We’re here to share a mutual joy in their expertise. This album, the group’s first after more than a decade of live performance, starts happy and stays happy for much of its length, slowing down for one or two songs about women who done the singer wrong. Otherwise it’s plucky as a shot of coffee.

Rating:

Media
Comments
Now on PopMatters
Hip Hop Es Mi Cultura (Columns) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Van Halen: A Different Kind of Truth (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Eyvind Kang: The Narrow Garden (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
The Soft Hills: The Bird Is Coming Down to Earth (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Matthias Sturm: Blood and Thunder (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Jack DeJohnette: Sound Travels (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Sam Mickens: Slay & Slake (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Sibiri Samake: Dambe Foli (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Big Fresh: Moneychasers (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Alyssa Graham: Lock, Stock & Soul (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
A Painting Come to Life: 'The Mill & the Cross' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 4:00 pm]
  1. 'Nebraska': Bruce Springsteen's 'Heart of Darkness' (Columns)
  2. The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader)
  3. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 1: From 13Ghosts to Friendly Fires (Features)
  4. Not-So-Central Casting: Kevin Smith and the Birth of the Reality Podcast (Features)
  5. The 10 Greatest Movie Spies Ever (Short Ends and Leader)
  6. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 2: From the Go! Team to the Phoenix Foundation (Features)
  7. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 3: From Real Estate to Youth Lagoon (Features)
  8. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Reviews)
  9. The Top 15 Madonna Singles of All Time (Sound Affects)
  10. Get Off of My Cloud!: 'Collecting' Music in the Digital Age (Features)
  11. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Reviews)
  12. Google and the Production of Curiosity (Marginal Utility)
  13. Carole E. Barrowman’s Authorial Journey to Hollow Earth (Features)
  14. “Don’t Let Me Fall”: Hip-Hop in the Age of Austerity (Features)
  15. Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt (Columns)
  16. Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV (Reviews)
  17. Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Reviews)
  18. The Gay Ole Countryside (Columns)
  19. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Reviews)
  20. Counterbalance No. 67: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' (Sound Affects)
  21. Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro: A Rock Star’s Midlife Crisis or Valid Literature? (Features)
  22. A Look to the Past, An Insight Into the Present: The Use of Gender in 'Mad Men' (Features)
  23. The 10 Best John Coltrane Solos (Sound Affects)
  24. A Tale of How Great Journalism Became Revisionist History: Grambling State U Football (Columns)
  25. Chairlift: Something (Reviews)
  26. Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral (Reviews)
  27. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - "Heart Attack" (Cosmic Kids Remix) (PopMatters Premiere) (Mixed Media)
  28. The Barbaric (and Poetic) Yawp of Shelby Lynne (Notes from the Road)
  29. Mitt Romney Can Reside at Today's Proverbial 'Downton Abbey'... Newt Gingrich Cannot (Features)
  30. After Cease to Exist: The Far-from-Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (Features)
PM Picks
Music Archive
Announcements

© 1999-2012 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters.com™ and PopMatters™ are trademarks
of PopMatters Media, Inc.

PopMatters is wholly independently owned and operated.
PopMatters is a member of BUZZMEDIA Music, MOG and Guardian Select.