Track Dogs – Blind Summits & Hidden Dips
Track Dogs – Blind Summits & Hidden Dips
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital
Label: Mondegreen Records
Release: 2023
Release date: October 6, 2023
As per custom, Track Dogs are not resting on their laurels. The Irish, English, American quartet from Madrid have blasted past the pandemic lull – instruments a-blazing. Blind Summits & Hidden Dips is Track Dogs’ third album in 18 months. The 2022 album ‘Where to Now?’ was followed by the collaboration with ‘Show Of Hands,’ a Top 20 Folk Charts double album, ‘The ‘Dog Show Sessions’ Live,’ which culminated in an April 2023 performance at the Royal Albert Hall.
After the more inward-looking sound of Where to Now? Track Dogs wanted to capture something that lives up to the energy and vibrancy of their live shows – be it their Royal Albert Hall polish, their kitchen-counter, house concert intimacy, their Glastonbury joy, their Trafalgar Square triumph, or their Shrewsbury Folk Festival main-stage power.
As folks familiar with the band will know, Track Dogs have always dabbled in different styles, and they’re not holding back this time around either. Showing their not-so-dead man’s hand to be a full house of Americana Music, bluegrass, Latino, folk, and even blues, Track Dogs demonstrate that they really play their own genre. What sort of music do Track Dogs play? The answer is Track Dogs music.
There’s something for every kind of Americana music or folk head in the twists and turns of Blind Summits & Hidden Dips. You’ll find Eagles-influenced folk rock, ‘Cover Your Tracks’. There’s Bill Monroe style bluegrass, ‘Water the Lawn’, plus a rockabilly tilt on Lester Flatt standard, ‘Sleep With One Eye Open’. There’s sassy brass in the rumba-tinged opening track, ‘The Way of Things’. The guets of the album boast an original, funky blues number, featuring Blues Brother and James Taylor saxophonist, Lou Marini on ‘Be Your Silver Bullet’.
The cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rhiannon’ celebrates women at the crossroads of British culture and Americana Music. Track Dogs’ take on Stevie Nicks’ composition features young Spanish vocal maven, Lu Garnet conjuring up the Welsh witch depicted by Wisconsin author, Mary Bartlett Leader which had inspired the song.
Stockport-based American cellist Adrianne Wininsky and her partner, arranger/violinist, Chris Demetriou add introspective strings to ‘Peace Inside’.
The bilingual song ‘Play Nice’ and ska backbeat of ‘Strange Days’ see Track Dogs tipping their hats towards sun-soaked parts of the world of music.
The album’s salty closer is cheeky yet poignant tribute to the late great poet, Les Barker, Sequin queen of folk, Alice Jones, giving it “summat” Yorkshire with her honky harmonium on this sea song seasoning of Barker’s poem, ‘Disaster at Sea’.
Website: https://trackdogsmusic.com/
Tracks:
01. The Way of Things
02. Cover Your Tracks
03. Be Your Silver Bullet (feat. Lou Marini)
04. Water the Lawn
05. Peace Inside
06. Play Nice
07. Sleep With One Eye Open
08. Strange Days
09. Rhiannon (feat. Lu Garnet)
10. Disaster at Sea (with Alice Jones)