Build Me Up from Bones
Build Me Up from Bones gives Sarah Jarosz room to let the songs lead. She can play impressively, but uses mandolin, guitar and banjo mainly to find the right mood. The arrangements are varied and often strikingly spare. Her singing has enough warmth and small nuances to make those open spaces matter.
Over The Edge lets the instruments fit neatly together. Lap steel and guitar support the mandolin without pushing the voice backwards. The title track chooses strings and Aoife O'Donovan's harmonies. They fill out the music while leaving the melody clear.
The bluegrass roots are clearest on Fuel The Fire. Jarosz plays banjo while Chris Thile takes the mandolin. Its dark, driven movement fits the wider album, even as she more often explores the border between folk and Americana elsewhere.
Two covers offer a different kind of variety. Bob Dylan's Simple Twist Of Fate is reduced to voice and plucked cello. That small setting makes the delivery especially direct. Joanna Newsom's The Book Of Right-On instead gains a playful rhythm, with mandolin, cello and fiddle responding smoothly to each other.
On Gone Too Soon, the instruments and Kate Rusby's backing voice add colour to an unsettled love song. Again, the song matters more than the names contributing to it. Jarosz need not enlarge every emotion to communicate it.
Anyone mainly expecting fast bluegrass playing will find a different emphasis here. The strength lies in changing textures, carefully shaped melodies and a voice that moves increasingly naturally. Build Me Up from Bones puts technique at the service of the music and convincingly holds attention as a result. Its restraint gives the individual choices more weight.
