{"id":7967,"date":"2023-05-03T15:55:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T15:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=7967"},"modified":"2023-05-03T20:56:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T20:56:35","slug":"celebrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/03\/celebrants\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In the Cathedral of Change<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Nickel Creek\u2019s latest revival refuses to preach to the choir.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Charlie Clark
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Nickel Creek is a few months older than I am. That is, for a little longer than I\u2019ve been alive, Chris Thile and Sean and Sara Watkins have been making music together. In my experience, three decades is about how long you can sustain an identity before you have to do some serious reckoning with your false starts and dead ends. It takes about that long to accumulate the twists of failure and misapprehension\u2014the unexpected good turns, as well\u2014to spin your narrative out of control, to watch it come apart. Like any relationship, a band has a life of its own, its own story to lose in the telling. On Celebrants<\/em>, Nickel Creek\u2019s co-authors pick up the loose threads and knit them together into a loving, faithful reevaluation of their friendship, their creative partnership, and the Christ-haunted musical territory they\u2019ve been prospecting for thirty-odd years.<\/p>

I\u2019ve been listening to Nickel Creek for about half their time together, since the release of Why Should the Fire Die? <\/em>in 2005. Five years earlier, their self-titled Sugar-Hill debut had included two songs\u2014\u201cReasons Why\u201d and \u201cThe Hand Song,\u201d both written by Sean Watkins\u2014that would have been at home on a contemporary Christian album. By contrast, the religious overtones on Why Should the Fire Die? <\/em>were doubt-inflected, especially on the songs written by Thile, whose short-lived first marriage had broken up the previous year. \u201cDoubting Thomas,\u201d for example, is a song written from within a faith on the wane, a first stage along the way toward the wistful agnosticism of Thile\u2019s 2021 solo album, Laysongs<\/em>. Sharing as I did much of Thile\u2019s and the Watkins\u2019 cultural and religious background, as well as their apparently growing doubts, I could hardly wait to hear where they\u2019d go next.<\/p>

As it happened, Why Should the Fire Die? <\/em>was the last album of new Nickel Creek material for nine years. Those of us interested in charting the trio\u2019s musico-spiritual pilgrimage\u2014up from their 90s-era bluegrass traditionalism and Christian fundamentalism\u2014would have to follow three separate strands, as the members embarked upon a dizzying number of solo projects and collaborations. And apart from Sean Watkins\u2019s piquant gospel-pastiche, \u201c21st of May,\u201d 2014\u2019s A Dotted Line<\/em> offered little new fodder for the religion beat. Nine more years, and like a rare breed (rare brood?) of cicada, Nickel Creek emerges with a new record.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Two insistences hold Celebrants <\/em>together.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Newgrass, the genre Nickel Creek has helped define, is all about the creative repurposing of the past. Celebrants<\/em> turns this sensibility on the artists\u2019 themselves: \u201cListen to us trying to listen \/ To more and more life in these eddies \/ In our water under the bridge \/ Celebrants \/ Of the dissonance.\u201d The album celebrates the productivity of friction in all its forms, especially the feeling of (dis)continuity between the present and past self, but also the settled, almost familial tensions between longtime collaborators. Domestic strife itself is a source of inspiration, as on \u201cThinnest Wall\u201d and \u201cStone\u2019s Throw,\u201d and even the political surfaces occasionally, as on \u201cTo the Airport\u201d and \u201cNew Blood.\u201d<\/p>

Two insistences hold Celebrants <\/em>together. The first is \u201cnothing left behind.\u201d The past cannot be escaped or discarded. The people and places and practices that have shaped us demand attention and care. But the second is \u201cnothing left unchanged.\u201d Art is not preservation and life is not repetition: both are continually reimagined. Lead single \u201cStrangers\u201d is about committing to relationships sapped by overfamiliarity, to the awkward silences and small talk of people who have known each other too long to have anything new to say to each other: \u201cTo life with old friends \/ Droning on.\u201d This song, like several on the album, has a fugal quality, with melodies layered over one another, like the pages of a history or like voices overlapping and intersecting in conversation. It\u2019s a stunning marriage of meaning and form as one friend mourns that there is nothing between them but \u201ca memory \/ to move beyond\u201d while the other asks whether it might instead be \u201ca memory \/ to build upon?\u201d Ultimately, the song insists on loyalty to these \u201cdry wells\u201d: \u201cHit rock bottom \/ And get to shoveling.\u201d<\/p>

If the emphasis in \u201cStrangers\u201d falls on continuity\u2014a stubborn loyalty to old friends\u2014the emphasis in \u201cGoddamned Saint\u201d is on change. It\u2019s a conversion story, a testimony. Thile sings about a man who was \u201ca sinner \/ As far as I could understand \/ From the front pew of my choir.\u201d Confronted with Thile\u2019s \u201cparables,\u201d the sinner \u201clistened with an openness \/ I heard \/ As clear as any words \/ He could’ve preached or prayed.\u201d This encounter leads to a changed heart for Thile: \u201cAnd the other three walls I’d built \/ Around what I thought I felt came tumbling down \/ And a torrent of light shone in.\u201d If the song ended here, we might have another Enlightened Deconversion on our hands, but instead, it returns to the theme of continuity, drawing out the tension. Thile talks about being tempted by a new dogmatism\u2014\u201cI won’t even have a drink \/ With anyone who disagrees\u201d\u2014but remembers just in time, \u201cThat the well I’m drawing from \/ Springs from disagreements \/ With people who believe \/ That we can only change someone as much \/ As we’re willing to be changed.\u201d<\/p>

More could be said\u2014about the album\u2019s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic (not entirely cringe), about its relationship to bluegrass (The way on \u201cThe Meadow\u201d their voices mimic a Scruggs tuner: does it make up for Newgrass\u2019s unleashing Stomp and Holler on the world? No. Is it delicious? Yes.)\u2014but this is the heart of what Celebrants<\/em> has to offer: a mature perspective on what happens after After. On \u201cGoddamned Saint (Reprise),\u201d Thile sings, \u201cI look down my nose to see \/ A kid like I used to be \/ Praying in the dark to keep from poking around.\u201d He reaches out with love, with self-forgiveness, and with a willingness to yet be changed, \u201cAnd the shiny, new wall comes tumbling down.\u201d This was worth the wait.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Charlie Clark<\/strong> is a writer and<\/em> retractor<\/em><\/a>. He lives in New Hampshire.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Celebrants<\/strong> was released by Repair Records on January 22, 2023. You can purchase and stream it from the band’s website here<\/a>. <\/em>
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