Love and Panic Dance Hand in Hand on Nickel Creek’s Celebrants
Photo by Josh Goleman
With the line “My god, it’s good to see you,” Nickel Creek welcomes you back after nine years with Celebrants, their first original album since 2014’s A Dotted Line, and quickly acknowledges that we have work to do. The trio, composed of Chris Thile, Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins, and joined by Mike Elizondo, has been making Americana music together in ebbs and flows for more than 20 years. By now, they know something about working together. What might lie ahead is “something we can sing through”—having incisively clever-sounding harmonies like theirs certainly helps.
The group rapidly weaves together and apart on this album, from the tearing pace of Thile’s mandolin or Sara Watkins’s fiddle to the quick wit of their lyrics. There is patience for moments of rest and quiet, but they do not suffer inactivity. The music demands an awareness of movement—“Celebrants” has literal stomping, whereas on “Strangers” the instrumentation takes on the sureness of footsteps, whether through the dancing lightness of Thile’s mandolin, or the certain stepping of Mike Elizondo’s bass. The mix of instrumental tracks with vocals reminds us that more than anything, Nickel Creek are avid musicians, full of feeling accented by their technical prowess. Sara Watkins’s jazz-inflected vocal slides on “Thinnest Wall” are made all the more exhilarating by their unexpectedness, mischievously playing with their usual bluegrass sound. The waterfalls of Thile’s picking on “Going Out…” not only enhance but create the world as it is on fresh evenings, the excitement and spinning of the night ahead already coating the inside of your mind. Though their dexterity is impressive, it serves as an emotional anchor, furthering the impact of the songs, rather than some technical competition.
Their sense of drama is not gone in the slightest, and the titular track is more than enough to sweep you along with them. Everything that follows only adds to the excitement. The whole album is built on these musical precipices: the slowing, the anticipation and the fall into instrumental frenzy. Luckily, the album is too well-balanced for the intensity to ever exhaust you, moving from songs that you have to sprint to keep up with to tracks that slow down due to fear or meditation. “Strangers” seesaws as a track between the slowly wonderful parts of rediscovering an estranged loved one, enmeshed with the quickening pace of attempting to connect after the world disconnected us all. Both parts of “Water Under The Bridge” ask you to take a momentary breath just after the start of the album and just before the end.
-
-
-
-
- Curated Home Page Articles By Test Admin October 21, 2025 | 3:10pm
-
- Curated Home Page Articles By Test Admin October 21, 2025 | 2:57pm
- Urls By Test Admin October 21, 2025 | 2:57pm
- Curated Home Page Articles By Test Admin October 21, 2025 | 2:55pm
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-