[rating=2.50]
Laura Cortese is a singer/songwriter who plays a mean fiddle and has put together an all female string quartet to record her Acoustic Project EP. The group of players consists of Natalie Hass on cello, Brittany Haas contributing the 5-string fiddle parts while Hanneke Cassel strums and plucks the 4-string fiddle. The style of tunes presented by the ladies ranges all over the folk world. There are acoustic pop such as “Perfect Tuesdays”, old rural traditional numbers like “Greasy Coat” and a Celtic flair that emerges on “Women Of The Ages”.
The playing is first class with Cortese’s voice suited perfectly for the easy string support; the group meshes effortlessly presenting a unified string summit. The only downsides to the EP lie in the repetitiveness and the ordering of the songs presented. “Overcome” is a dense original that is layered with intertwined lyrics peaks and valleys and overwhelms as the opener and may be better suited later on; perhaps breaking up the two instrumentals in the middle of Acoustic Project. Then again you could just turn shuffle on and enjoy the foursomes fiddling folk finesse.
