Nickel Creek - "Celebrants"
One of the most complex albums of the year
Nickel Creek aren’t a band that I’m familiar with; I don’t track them, but I also found this album through auditing my tracking sheet. Because while I don’t track them, I do track Chris Thile, who is pictured on the album cover in the center of the trio. And I originally discovered Thile through his other group — Punch Brothers. But NIckel Creek was his first group, with their earliest albums releasing in the early 90s,1 and they’ve been on hiatus for damn near a decade now.
But none of that tells you what Nickel Creek is:
Progressive Bluegrass.
Hey, whoa, come back. If you leave after hearing the genre name, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. Especially if you’re into really technical music.
See, Bluegrass is already a genre which leans into playing hard and fast. So when you add in progressive elements, you end up with Nickel Creek’s Celebrants. This album is an hour-long ride which takes folk music on a mountainous rollercoaster while playing fast and loose with the rules. There are so many goddamned perfect accidentals and well-honed harmonies on this album that you forget to hate the banjo.2
I used to think that Bluegrass was a genre with so few highlights that I could name all of them with just two words.3 Then, about 2018 or so, I discovered the Punch Brothers’ incredible The Phosphorescent Blues (an album they have yet to match), and honestly it opened my eyes to more of what the genre was truly capable of.
Most Bluegrass fails to live up to it, but the potential is there.
Celebrants meets — and exceeds — those expectations.
There are many incredible moments on this album, and many of them involve resolving dissonance, musically. So, of course, I’m delighted to find that those moments aren’t just highlights of the album, but are core to the entire experience. The band has explained the album’s concept by stating:
“This is a record about embracing the friction inherent in real human connection. We begin the record yearning for and pursuing harmonious connection. We end the record having realized that truly harmonious connection can only be achieved through the dissonance that we’ve spent our entire adult lives trying to avoid.”
From the tense, weighty fiddle in “To the Airport” to the three-part vocal harmonies in “The Meadow” winding tightly through flats and sharps, the album relishes in these moments which I can only describe as uncomfortably beautiful.
And this core idea of finding harmonious connection feels not only timely for society at-large, but also immensely personal for the band, themselves. That they have taken a break from collaborating together for seven or eight years, which included a global pandemic, and must now come back together and reestablish musical chemistry…
The concept is appropriate on multiple levels. And were this in a more popular genre, this album might have a shot at becoming a timeless classic.
After just two listens,4 I’m having trouble finding any flaws. I’m also not fully certain of how strong its strengths truly are. What I do know is that this album clears the bar for a minimum 8/10 score rather easily. So Celebrants will stand alone for the moment.
Rating: Lavender Blue
Concurrent with Thile’s initial solo albums.
Seriously, it’s not a punchline here. And it’s also not the only string instrument at play by a long shot.
Those words being: Alison Krauss
Celebrants is on the longer side, falling just nine seconds short of an even hour in length. It also has 18 total tracks, three of which are under 70 seconds in length. I need more time to digest.