Crooked Hollows

While many country singer/songwriters going for the brass ring relocate to Nashville, Ty Gilpin moved from Music City to Asheville, N.C. “Queen of the Crows” opens Crooked Hollows with comforting bluegrass tones and breezy melodies. Over delicately plucked banjo, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and a simple but solid rhythm section, Gilpin sings to a dark muse in his deep tenor. Some Bakersfield-flavored pedal steel melts like butter over the following gem, “Smiling for the Camera”—an instantly memorable tune with gossamer high-lonesome vocal harmonies. He invokes a Dave Rawlings/Gillian Welch chemistry in “Old Rotten Ribbons,” which features fetching male-female harmonies sung with a close precision and a loose groove. “Been in Love Before” boasts the album’s best playing and most complex arrangements. This is nicely contrasted with a sing-along melody that’s sung with a noticeably raspier grit. Deep cello drones and Irish pipes take “Going to the West” off the front porch and into the rolling hills of the Emerald Isles.