Sleep With One Eye Open

Product Review

Sleep with One Eye Open is an impassioned collaboration/conversation between mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile and guitarist Michael Daves, in which the subject is bluegrass, specifically how this upstart duo can acknowledge history and tradition while exuberantly defying convention. Though it was recorded in four feverish days of sessions at Jack White's Third Man studio in Nashville, the album has deep roots in a serendipitous side of New York City that reveals itself at certain times of the night, when strangers become kindred spirits as clubs empty out, and only the hardiest souls stick around to keep the music playing. It's a story that begins, like so many, with a guy walking into a bar.

On Sleep with One Eye Open, Thile and Daves acknowledge history and tradition while they exuberantly defy convention; they balance the tender with the devil-may-care, emphasizing, as Thile puts it, "the slightly delinquent side of bluegrass." Recording live to two-inch analog tape and singing into one vintage microphone, the duo cut 16 tracks at Third Man, claiming the honor of being the first artists White has allowed to record there on their own. (He also let them borrow his house engineer, Vance Powell.)

Songs like "Loneliness and Desperation" and the title track emphasize rollicking, rapid-fire arrangements that often serve, in tried-and-true bluegrass fashion, to mask the most sorrowful of feelings. Daves and Thile's voices blend as seamlessly and, on tracks like "Bury Me Beneath the Willow," as plaintively-as their instruments. As Thile explains, "Mandolin and guitar and two male voices - it's such a good sound. What was important for us was to get that brother duet thing, but with this Lower East Side punk energy."

Though the sessions themselves have an appealing air of spontaneity, Sleep with One Eye Open was a project literally years in the making. As Thile explains, "All the work for this record had already been done at the jam sessions and at the shows we put on at the Rockwood Music Hall; we just had to take a snapshot of it. I think we found a way to maintain our wide-eyed wonder about this stuff and deliver it with the sincerity of people who need to play this music to feel good." Fans will no longer have to scour Facebook or Myspace hoping for news of an impromptu, semi-secret gig from this pair: Thile and Daves are finally taking their show on the road this spring, starting in May with a three-night stand at Rockwood.

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