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Excellent Album – James D Kirk Jr – Culloden,, WV United States

There are a lot of performers sort of incorporating old timey music into their style but I think Adrienne Young is one of the better ones.

While some of this album is singer songwriter stuff the old timey and sort of cajun tinged stuff is very good. For some performers it seems out of place but this album is an excellent blending.
Art of Virtue (Dig): : Fusing past and present in her pop-inflected old time music, Adrienne Young applies a worldly compassion, a poet’s pen and a spirit of independence and self-reliance to her sophomore effort The Art of Virtue, out June 28, 2005, on her own Addiebelle Records (distributed by Virtual Label/Ryko).

Inspired in part by Ben Franklin’s ‘virtues of man’ writings and stories from an older and perhaps wiser America, Young expands upon the themes of cultivation and stewardship so beautifully asserted on her acclaimed debut Plow to the End of the Row. With Virtue, Young makes a statement both personal and universal, both idealistic and constructive.

“There seems to be a growing passion–collectively and individually–to understand the foundation of our American culture and how we’ve turned from that,” states Young. “Personally, it steered me back toward a time when our country was rooted in agrarian ideals and words were powerful enough to begin a new world. Ben Franklin had such a practical approach toward nurturing virtue, the first point being nobody’s perfect!”

The Art of Virtue was produced by Young with able assistance from long-time collaborator Will Kimbrough and acoustic recording genius Gary Paczosa. Besides Young’s accomplished songwriting, the 15 tracks include old-time fiddle tunes reimagined for a new day, the gospel standard “Farther Along,” and the Grateful Dead’s classic anthem of renewal “Brokedown Palace.” The message is consistent: every choice we make, from the food we buy to the channels we watch to the history we do or don’t preserve, has consequences. Our standards can be higher, she says, despite the many forces that seem to corrode them. Few songwriters can negotiate this terrain with ease and assurance, but Young is one who can.

Raised in Florida and influenced by her grandfather (who at age 80 still picks in a bluegrass band), Young evolved from actress to recording artist after moving to Nashville and enrolling in Belmont University’s music business program. Her career accelerated after she took first place in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at North Carolina’s Merlefest. Then, working with Nashville pop and alt-country visionary Will Kimbrough, Young made Plow to the End of the Row. Not only was the album acclaimed by critics, it earned a Grammy nomination for album design. Those who bought the album were rewarded by the tiny package of seeds nested in the CD sleeve, an idea of Young’s that made her worldview tangible.

With The Art of Virtue, Young’s singing and songwriting has achieved a new level of lushness and depth. The pop freshness so apparent on Young songs like “Home Remedy” and “I Cannot Justify” is here, though perhaps nestled deeper inside a musical bed chiefly made of Young’s old-time banjo, striking fiddling and silvery, bold acoustic guitar. In songs like “Rastus Russell,” “Walls of Jericho” and “It’s All the Same,” Young articulates a moral vision with stories and allegory. In the title track, she asserts a more direct call for action and accountability, in her own life and indirectly in the rest of ours. Adrienne Young & Little Sadie’s The Art of Virtue is a fun, poppy country-folk album–more folk than country and more either than pop, but nevertheless accessible while remaining true to its roots. (There isn’t a thing wrong with their renditions of the traditional “Farther Along” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat”–this is a string band, featuring Young on clawhammer banjo, that knows what it’s doing.) What really makes the album special, though, is Young’s originals, whose earnestness it’s hard not to get caught up in. Just try listening to the title track or “Jump the Broom” while sitting still. Another highlight is “Hills & Hollers,” Young’s elegy for the built-over American landscape (“There used to be hills and hollers here/Wild turkey and the white-tailed deer/Creeks runnin’ crystal-clear/Water on its way to the Gulf of Mexico”). Like its predecessor, Plow to the End of the Row, the album is coproduced by the multitalented Will Kimbrough, who also lends his instrumental, compositional, and singing talents to many of the tracks. –Benjamin Lukoff
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