3 out of 5

Label: VHF Records

Produced by: Black Twig Pickers (?)

With two albums down of eagerly covered traditionals and some energized originals, The Black Twig Pickers – temporarily christened as The Black Twigs – deliver a third that’s somewhere ’round the bend of that trajectory, delivering mostly originals, but with a kind of calm that grounds them from being, er, too original. There’s something telling in the title: the previous album name declared that the dawn was approaching, and there was an urgency suggested by that sensation that translated to the music; even though Midnight is maybe closer to a time of activity for some, that it’s “come and gone” is a passive observation, and again, the music follows suit. We have a whole suite of beautiful and fun tunes, with hootin’ and hollerin’ and virutoso fiddlin’ and strummin’, but at the same time, it feels a bit too tempered; or rather, it’s coming across slightly more as play acting.

A good summary of this is ‘Tell It To The Bossman,’ a more paced original that spreads out the Black Twigs’ sound really effectively, straying from some of the usual toe-tappin’ format to Fahey- or Jack Rose-adjacent style playing, albeit with a clear folk / Americana backbone. The inclusion of occasional bass, while often doing a pretty standard two-note thing throughout, also offers greater counterpoint on this track. But the lyrics… well, the lyrics cross back and forth between “ya done closed the factory” old timey speak to some fight-the-rich mantras that always ring true. I can’t speak to the livelihoods of those in Black Twigs; maybe they’ve been involved in some job loss scenarios that match the lyrics; however, there’s something distractingly kind of distancing to the presentation; play-acting the folksiness while playing for an audience that’s maybe some decades out from appreciating that. I realize I’m certainly projecting; at a very basic level, though, I’d say this song code switches a bit, and that sensibility floats through Midnight: we hear the group growing even more into their own sound in the album’s back half, with the rootsy Bent Mountain Drag and Blood Red Clay Coal Black Sand, but we’ve got plenty of relatively mindless fare like Fire In The Stove to just kind of check some stylistic boxes. Nothing really stands out as definitive; the fire that motivated the previous albums isn’t as necessary anymore as the group are all proven hands at playing their hootenanny convincingly, but they’re also not ready to advance that into a more modern version that’s suggested by pieces of the highlighted songs.

That said, fans of the previous releases certainly will be pleased; though at the same time, I’d hope the next release finds ways to add to the formula with a bit more conviction.