[americana, bluegrass] (2025) Susto Stringband - Volume One [FLAC...

    Susto Stringband – Volume One (2025)

Review:
For more than a decade, Justin Osborne has been fronting Susto, putting out a solid mix of Indie Rock and Americana across five records. The Susto Stringband is a fantastic experiment and evolution of his work, reworking seven songs from his cannon as bluegrass numbers, while adding in two new songs to the mix. The result is impressive – while the genre shift doesn’t exactly change the emotions tied to the initial songs it does show them off in a new light. This new experiment came courtesy of Osbourne moving to Ashville, NC (a town well versed in bluegrass music). He showed up to an open mic and met the future members of the Susto Stringband. The songs picked for Volume 1 are some of Osborn’s most affecting ones, many of them ballads. Some of the tracks here seem like a natural fit for the string band treatment like the album opener “Mt. Caroline” (easily the best song on this record) or “Rooster,” while there are other songs here that seem like an odd choice to rework as bluegrass numbers, like “Homeboy” originally off of Ever Since I Lost My Mind. It works surprisingly well in this new genre. “Acid Boys,” one of the oldest songs on the record, also works remarkably well, sounding more like a Steve Earle song thanks to the fiddle. But the song that seems to have transformed the most from this collection is the album closer, “Life Is Suffering” another musical highpoint here. The two new songs written for the record, “Never Losing Me” and “Double Crown,” slip nicely into the collection. “Never Losing Me,” one of the mellower numbers on the album, is a beautiful love letter to his son and daughter. While “Doble Crown,” co-written by his wife Caroline, is another sweet, slower number name-checking a local dive bar while also singing about love. At just nine songs, the only real disappointment with Volume 1 is that it comes off as too short, completely justifying a Volume 2. With this record, Osborne’s gambling on reinvention pays off exceedingly well, creating anticipation for a follow-up. — glidemagazine.com

Track List:
01 - Mt. Caroline
02 - Friends, Lovers, Ex-Lovers; Whatever
03 - Rooster
04 - Acid Boys
05 - Homeboy
06 - Never Losing Me
07 - Double Crown
08 - God of Death
09 - Life is Suffering


Media Report:
Genre: americana, bluegrass
Origin: Charleston, South Carolina, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26)


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