About a week ago, Susie handed me a copy of the Steep Canyon Rangers newest album, “Lovin’ Pretty Women” and asked that I review it for the site. As Brendan Calling (From the Underground) readers know, I’m a big bluegrass fan, so I was only too happy to oblige.

I’ve also been lucky enough to see the SCR on at least two occasions: live, the band is very good, offering solid performances, tight harmonies, and more-than-adequate emcee work. This may sound like a picayune concern, but to my mind there is nothing worse than a band that stands silently between songs, debating what song will be next, tuning their instruments, and doing nothing to engage the audience. A well-practiced emcee can make a good band great and can make a bad band tolerable.

The instrumental performances are also quite good: mandolin player Mike Guggino has clearly been listening to his Bill Monroe and fiddle player Nicky Clark Sanders has just the right touch, especially on his backups, and even more especially on “Desperate and Blue”, where his fiddle adds a wonderful honky tonk atmosphere throughout the song. Banjo player and lyric-writer Graham Sharp has a mellow easy going roll that fits their material perfectly.

That said, “Lovin’ Pretty Women” is an OK album at best. The songs, nearly all of which are original, are peppy and driving the way a bluegrass song should be. The album opener, “A Ramblin’ Man is a Ramblin’ Man” has a catchy melody… and utterly trite, forgettable lyrics that are trying to be anything but.

A wildfire travels on a wayward wind
through a field of broken dreams
Your memory flies through my restless heart
on a fallen angel’s wings

Yeccch. And there’s more of the same in the title track, and in many of the proceeding tracks: lots of mushy sentiments with a new-country/ hippy flavor laid over bluegrass instruments. It’s difficult to make more than “in my opinion” statements about others’ lyrics and I am reluctant to do so, but there is a little too much of a singer-songwriter” vibe to Sharp’s lyrics for my taste. One of the remarkable things about bluegrass is an ability to express complicated feelings and experiences in exceedingly simple lyrics. For example, take the first verse a chorus to the Bill Monroe classic, Along About Daybreak:

When we were young and we thought we loved each other
But you didn’t love me I guess
For you’ve gone and you’ve found another
Everything to you is regret

This morning along about daybreak
You quarreled at me the whole night through
I know it’s not too late for your sake dear
But for me I will always be blue

These are simple, and stark, lyrics that put the entire trajectory of a failed relationship into 4 crushing lines (and that’s just the first verse, wait till the “be good to our babies” part). Compare that to

I need a brand new spirit, I need a brand new song
I’ll know it when I hear it and I’ll sing it all day long
All day long and everywhere
I just have one request
Let me live to love and love to live
And lay me down to rest.

That’s just insipid.

Another weakness probably has more to do with the state of bluegrass music recording than with the band itself: the uninteresting and practically sterile production. Sure, you can hear every instrument perfectly, but to me it sounds just like every other bluegrass album in recent memory. I felt their earlier effort, “One Dime at a Time” had a more original production. “Lovin’ Pretty Women” is a little too compressed, a little too pristine for my taste.

If you like the Alison Krauss production value, you’ll probably like the overall sound of the Steep Canyon Rangers latest effort. However, I found “Lovin’ Pretty Women” to be a bit forgettable. Go see ‘em live: that’s where the Steep Canyon Rangers are at their best.