10 String Symphony – Generation Frustration
Tasty Note Records – 13 July 2018
10 String Symphony take their name from the fact they play two five-string fiddles alongside a five-string banjo, the Nashville-based duo comprises Grammy nominated fiddle player Christian Sedelmyer and much-feted multi-instrumentalist Rachel Baiman. Produced by Kris Drever, who is largely responsible for the new sonic landscape, their new album pushes the musical boundaries of their instrumentation while also focusing in on the current sociopolitical climate in America, its songs about politics, racism, poverty, privilege and climate change a perfect thematic pairing with Baiman’s own recent solo album, Shame.
Despite the heavy issues, the music is generally light, case in point being the jauntily catchy Anxious Annie where, addressing the ‘helplessness blues’, Baiman sings “I feel the ceiling/Coming down on me like a boxing glove/Well I don’t want to worry/I don’t want to cry/ and I don’t want to be afraid to die.”
Having said that, however, Others Must Knock adopts a nervy, fractured melodic and rhythmic structure with neurotic plucked banjo notes on which, addressing privilege and inequality, Sedelmyer sings, in a Simonesque style, how “you drive these roads, while others must walk… another’s misfortune is your afterthought.”
There’s downbeat personal relationship numbers too. The banjo-led I Can’t Have You Anymore with its soaring fiddle work is a pure mountain music ballad about a former lover, while, on a similar note the rhythmic chug and bass notes of One Way Telephone carry a lyric about wanting to clear the air about the things that were and weren’t said. On a wry playful note, the two numbers are bridged by Sedelmyer’s brief but frisky fiddle and banjo angsty instrumental Fuckin’ Up.
Even when relationships aren’t falling apart, in the banjo-dappled jog of Running Around the pressures of modern city life make it hard to enjoy them on account of “hustling and getting things done”. No longer “at the five having fun”, but too busy “chasing those plans we made.”
Co-penned by Baiman and Caroline Spence, one of the loveliest and simplest melodies is in the service of Throw Away The Moon, the duo harmonising on the chorus while, backed by a simple yearning fiddle-line, Baiman sings about how we’re never satisified with what we have, either in material possessions or relationships, “when you catch one, you miss the chase/All the toss and turning, sleeping by yourself /Cause when you got someone, you want someone else” and we “gotta make some room in the sky for something new.”
It’s not all so negative. The title track opener, another naggingly infectious melody underlaid by a pulsing fiddle, waves the flag for the power of music as Baiman declares “the dancing of chords under purposeful voice” to be her “weapon of choice” in the hope that songs can “reach stubborn minds.” Even the musically shape-shifting The Ballad of Bruno, a contemplation of power dynamics and repression – “they think themselves the center of every holy thing /With a Single God who rules above/A king who holds the strings” – which unfolds into a jittery Appalachian-fiddle breakdown comes with the declaration that “You cannot cage the winds of thought or keep the truth at bay.”
It ends with its sole non-original, an obscure but faithful cover of The Tidy Bug (feat. Kris Drever), written by New Zealand-born fiddler George Jackson of Brisbane-based two fiddle bluegrass outfit The Company and taken from their 2016 album Six & Five.
Baiman was recently in the UK touring with fellow bluegrass star Molly Tuttle,and it’s to be hoped that the reception she received will prompt her to persuade her musical partner to put his session work on hold for a week or so and, having recorded the album on these shores, come and personally introduce it to live audiences too.