I am very excited to share this band. I got an email on Thursday, May 24, from NoiseTrade regarding their Special Feature Album that week, and since it was free, I was like, "sure, why not, I'll give it a go." And I am so glad I did!
Imagine Mumford & Sons and Brown Bird had a love child and sent it to boarding school in 16th Century England and/or Ireland. It would come back and make this gem of a record (well, really it'd be seven love-children) Bison's debut album, Quill (released 9/28/2011) is classical folk music at it's best. I am totally digging this re-emergence of folk music, and not like Bob Dylan or other 1960s folk music, but Appalachian mountain top chamber folk music. I LOVE it.
The seven member band from Chesapeake, Virginia, Benjamin Hardesty, Dan Hardesty, Annah Hardesty, Andrew Benfante, Amos Housworth, Teresa Totheroh, Jay Benfante, grew from living room and back yard bon fire sessions, of what I can only assume included family and friends just playing music together. The songwriting is on the shoulders of Benjamin Hardesty, and he's pretty darn good. The vocal arrangements are perfection, and the strings and guitars, mandolin, banjos (I LOVE banjos!), appropriately timed hand clapping, and what ever other instruments they use flow so nicely into each and every song.
Quill opens with Switzerland, with it's strings, xylophone, and guitars, is the prefect opening track, it grabs your attention; makes you stick around for the rest of the record. Every track that follows is just as good as the previous one. My favorite tracks on the record are Switzerland, Tired Hands, In Your Room, and Setting Our Tables, but really, every song on this record is fantastic. It will not disappoint!
Though I wish I could have had more time with this record to let it marinate in my mind, so I could have written a more wordy review, but I am just too excited to get it out there, to share it with y'all. Even if you're like, "oh, I really don't care for folk music" GO GET THIS RECORD. Take a chance, I did.
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