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Update: The String Cheese Incident to perform on the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn on Wednesday, October 15th. Check your local CBS listings for exact airtimes. |
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| Reviews: "Fromage-obsessed Hacky Sackers make a kind of Dark Side of the Gouda" "Jam bands are generally known for taking all their chances onstage, but The String Cheese Incident are turning into an inventive and ambitious recording act too. After seriously upending their bluegrass-rooted hippie-rock image with 2001's dance oriented 'The String Cheese Remix Project', the Colorado quintet brought in Orb producer (and former Killing Joke bassist) Youth to twiddle knobs on their fourth studio album. With its kaleidoscopic approach to sound and wide-ranging embrace of styles, the music manages to be both trippy and tuneful, taking on a Pink Floydian cast, from the spacey sax solo on "Looking Glass" to the rollicking Celtic fiddle in the trance-spiked "Valley of the Jig". Just what the Bonnaroo subculture needs: a Riverdance influence" - Blender The often-used cliché that "change can be a good thing" applies to the String Cheese Incident's latest studio album. While Untying The Not is far from the shocking creative burst that band members hinted at in the press several weeks prior to its release, the album does represent a bold, mature and adventurous direction for the quintet. A somber tone runs throughout the album as SCI contemplates mortality and one's place in the world. Fortunately, the sounds that accompany these thoughts do not allow the overall mood to become maudlin. Despite linking a song about personal loss ("Sirens") with the air raid sirens heard during time of war ("Tinder Box," which includes lyrics by John Barlow, sometime collaborator with Bob Weir), SCI finds some way to view life as the light at the end of the tunnel rather than succumb to its darkness. There are echoes of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and world beat running through the material, yet it's not enough to completely submerge the SCI sound. Something more familiar can be heard on the traditional bluegrass number, "Lonesome Road Blues," but that style is updated with a dollop of electronica and some vocal input from Julia Butterfly on "Valley of the Jig." "On My Way" finishes the album, traipsing through a psychedelic journey that takes us closer to our final destination and, in the case of the String Cheese Incident, onward to new musical horizons. -Relix Until this, their 6th record, SCI made albums that didn’t stray far from the reality of their on-stage abilities. In other words, they never really used the studio as an opportunity to explore new sounds or even new identities, but rather as a showcase for songs that would get the full cheese live experience. With Untying The Not this trend is reversed to stunning effect. Employing superstar modern producer Youth (original Killing Joke member and producer of the Verve’s landmark Urban Hymns album) they have crafted a stunning musical tapestry that takes the listener to places they might not expect to go. Youth’s presence is obvious from the get go as a lush cloud of hypnotic sound billows from the speakers-dotted with sampled voices coming at you from the ether, hinting at cosmic truths and homespun wit, giving way to warm melody and gorgeous ensemble playing. Then you get to track four and the album really lifts off. A six-song suite of alternately intense and beautiful techno explorations of the basic SCI sound. This is the musical equivalent of that TV commercial where the kid gets his chocolate bar stuck in the other kid’s jar of peanut butter-except this time it’s a granola bar floating in a jar of liquid ecstasy. A compelling listen from start to finish, the addition of a big-time producer with radical ideas has turned this into a psychedelic masterwork. This is SCI’s Dark Side Of The Moon, or Aoxomoxoa, or Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld. In addition to the Youth connection, there is a strong Grateful Dead connection as John Perry Barlow cowrites two songs and Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia provides a great spoken word piece as part of the aforementioned suite of songs. I really can’t stress how DIFFERENT and utterly wonderful this album is. It is by far the best String Cheese Incident album, and an enormous step forward for them as a studio band. It also hearkens back to a time when bands would try to create magnificent studio works that really couldn’t be reproduced live-so folks had a reason to actually buy the record. Get in touch with your inner hippie! -Paul Epstein, Twist and Shout |
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