This Time I’ve Got no Hesitation and I’ll Be Moving on to Where I Belong

I finally got into Nickel Creek when they released their fifth album Why Should This Fire Die? I had an irrational hatred of country music in my youth, and once that thawed I was ready to look at artists pushing the conventions of the genre like Nickel Creek who drew on a heavy influence of folk too but still hung out on the outskirts of country music. Of course once I finally discovered the band, they went on an indefinite hiatus. Well at least I had the previous four albums to go back and check out and despite the hiatus, the individual members continued to make music by themselves, with the Punch Brothers, Fiction Family, and many other side projects.

In the nine years since their album, Mumford and Sons brought folk to the mainstream opening up the door of other likeminded artists to breakthrough, including The Lumineers who basically took the Nickel Creek esthetic and created a huge pop success out of it. Now Nickel Creek is back and ready to take back the folk crown. Where most groups reunite and put out a new album as an excuse to tour behind it, the first song Nickel Creek released in almost a decade, Destination, stands with everything already in their catalogue. The upbeat song features everything you loved about Nickel Creek, Sara Watkins beautiful voice, tight harmonies, and a great interplay of mandolin and fiddle.

The rest of A Dotted Line proves the trio has not lost a step. It sounds as if they spend the last nine years just saving their best song ideas for the inevitable reunion album. The rest of the album I mostly what you would expect from the group, nice folk ballads and of course there is a beautiful instrumental track Elsie. But they also push their sound further with Hayloft which is the most danceable song ever in the traditional, non-hoedown kind of way as well as their least Nickel Creek sounding song ever. It seems like we will not be getting a Christmas album from the group anytime soon because there is the beautiful Christmas Eve which could be another of those rare holiday track.

When bands have been away for almost a decade or more, the comeback album is just put out to promote the comeback tour and then play the hits on that tour with one or two new songs which are used as bathroom breaks for fans. Nickel Creek bucks that trend with one of their best albums yet. If you go and see them, make sure your bladder is empty before they start because you definitely do not want to miss these new songs live. Hopefully we do not have to wait another nine years for the next one.

Song to Download – Destination

A Dotted Line gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.