On their latest, Lines In The Levee, Ashville, North Carolina’s Town Mountain manage to sidestep the impulse to soften their sound with a pop sheen that would certainly blunt their authenticity but could bring them a more mainstream audience. Rather, much like their labelmates 49 Winchester, they deliver 11 tracks of faithful traditional country and bluegrass with enough strings and swing to make a band like Asleep At The Wheel beam with pride.
They also manage to build on the foundation laid in their 2018 effort, blending in a little more folk and Americana into their sound – a conscious decision according to guitarist Robert Greer. “This is the sound we’ve been working towards since the inception of the band. It isn’t a departure, it’s an evolution — the gate is wide open right now.”
Despite an obvious prowess for playing steady country spiked with a little rock, the band is equally deft at writing smart lyrics with deep meaning. From the very first song, the title track, Town Mountain plays off on the social upheaval of 2020 and switches gears to tackle manmade climate change on “Seasons Don’t Change,” hallway into the record. One of the standout tracks on the album, they tackle the issue with enough finesses and charm that they don’t come off preachy but simply pragmatic.
The band also covers some more personal issues throughout as well, like the difficulty of trying to make it in the music business combining self-doubt and constant obstacles on “Comeback Kid” (it’s a theme that pops up again on the albums closing track, “Lean into the Blue”).
Following up 2018’s New Freedom Blues, the band went down to Nashville to work with Justin Francis (behind records from Kacey Musgraves, Orville Peck, and oddly enough Anti-Flag). Together for more than a decade, this is their first album for New West Records, a label that seems like an obvious choice for the band given its roster of Americana/country-leaning artists that are equally uncompromising and immune to the whims of current musical trends.
