The Greencards July 23, 2010

You could call it an attraction...a curiosity...an anticipation of surprise and delight.

But theres a better word to describe what the music of The Greencards inspires.

Fascination.

If youve followed this multinational threesome over these past five years, you know the feeling. From their personal histories through the content of their work, grounded in deep musical tradition but elevated by breathtaking technique and conceptual adventurousness, there is ample reason for interest ... for excitement ...

For Fascination.

Now, with their Sugar Hill Records debut, its official. Fascination describes the essence of this band. It was, first of all, their fascination with American roots music - bluegrass especially - that drew singer/bassist Carol Young and multiple string-instrument master Kym Warner from Australia, and violinist/violist Eamon McLoughlin from the U.K., to Austin, Texas, where they began performing together, and later to their current home base in Nashville.

That urge to challenge themselves, to test the limits of any established genre, guided them on their first three albums. It kept them focused as they accumulated awards and acclamations, from the Americana Music Award in 2006 for "Emerging Artist of the Year" through tours with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to last years "Best Country Instrumental Performance" Grammy nomination for Viridian in 2008.

All of which leads to Fascination, the bands most daring accomplishment to date. Meticulously crafted arrangements serve as springboards for exhilarating improvisations. Acoustic textures shimmer in the light of Jay Joyces innovative production. On a dozen tracks, a dozen vistas open: an urgent urban scene on "The Avenue," a dreamy shadowland on "Three Four Time," a fiddle-sweetened reverie on "Outskirts of Blue," a hallucination, as much silence as substance, equal parts jazz, blues, and Pulp Fiction on "Into the Blue," a blaze of virtuosity unleashed on "Little Siam," a mesh of pizzicato pulses on the title track that sounds something like a reggae jam inside a grandfather clock.

http://www.thegreencards.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thegreencards
http://www.thegreencards.com/music.html

Official Website: http://www.jamminjava.com/