THREE TALL PINES: All That’s Left
THREE TALL PINES
All That’s Left
Three Tall Pines
Boston-based Three Tall Pines presents something of a non-sequitur, in that there are actually four of them, and something of a conundrum: are they a bluegrass band with an alt-country approach to their music, or the other way around? This is not to suggest that it’s a “glass half-empty/half-full” kind of thing, it’s intelligently crafted and performed music, just hard to put a label on, and that’s not at all a bad thing.
For the record, the band is Dan Bourdeau (guitar), Joe Lurgio (mandolin), Conor Smith (fiddle) and Gian Pangaro (bass and occasional Dobro). Though they all sing, Bourdeau and Lurgio are the primary lead vocalists, and between them they manage to evoke echoes ranging from Bob Dylan to Roger McGuinn to Jimmie Dale Gilmore and any number of stops in between. Instrumentally, this is not a flashy band, but they’re more than competent pickers, and the music doesn’t suffer from lack of blistering breaks, they seem to be more interested in setting vocal moods that are at times reminiscent of Crooked Still (perhaps not coincidentally, another Boston-area band).
Bourdeau and Lurgio are also the songwriters, or at least they wrote individually or together all the cuts on All That’s Left. “Tire Chains”, “Broken Panes” and “Weary Traveler” stand out as tunes that nicely exemplify the range of their writing talents, but the real keeper here is Bourdeau’s “Station Line”, a haunting duet between him and guest Celia Woodsmith, lead singer for the up-and-coming all-female bluegrass band Della Mae (yet another Boston crew).
Purists may look at the lack of a banjo (though a few cuts do feature Gabe Hirschfield sitting in) and pronounce “ain’t bluegrass,” but again, that’s beside the point. Just enjoy it for the good music that it is.
— John Lupton