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Spectacular double bill: The Railsplitters with Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards
19/Apr/2016 @ 19:30 - 23:55
£17.50The Railsplitters
With their new album, The Faster It Goes, The Railsplitters, are using these new influences to break the bonds of bluegrass and unleash tradition. Lauren Stovall and the rest of the ‘Splitters suggest that using your roots to evolve is really at the heart of the genre as, Bill Monroe himself was an innovator. With their finger on the pulse, The Railsplitters are pushing the genre forward with an adventurous spirit, carrying in the tradition of breaking boundaries with their innovative sound.
Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards
Laura Cortese the fiddler/
But, it’s been as Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards that she has made the biggest impression in recent times. It’s bold and elegant, schooled in the lyrical rituals of folk music and backed by grooves that alternately inspire Cajun two-stepping and rock ‘n’ roll swagger.
That was a fantastic gig, the Dance Cards went on to Edinburgh and played in another doubel bill there. This is how the Herald saw it:
Another Traverse Music Mondays double bill delivered more good music than should reasonably be expected on a school night. Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards is a string band with a difference. The San Francisco-born, Boston-based Cortese has gathered together a string quartet – her own and Jenna Moynihan’s fiddles, Valerie Thompson’s cello and Natalie Bohrn’s double bass – to play her own rootsy pop songs and the occasional Scottish reel.
It’s a quietly potent combination with pizzicato figures giving the songs both an intoxicating, raw energy and certain direction and bowing introducing a lusher sound but with a confident, percussive drive. There’s no little charm to their music and their vocal harmonies underline this, nowhere more so than on their offstage, surround sound acoustic encore which achieved a lovely blend of understated drama and delicacy.