The Gaslight Tinkers
(independent)
Lots of experiments in genre-crossing turn into one-trick ponies or big messes. The Valley’s Gaslight Tinkers avoid both traps. The group brings together some good players: Zoe Darrow on fiddle; Peter Siegel on guitar, mandolin, and banjo; Garrett Sawyer on bass and guitar; and Dave Noonan on drums and percussion. The whole band sings. The music that comes from this collaboration is a constant play of expectations unmet, but unmet by unusual ideas delivered beautifully.
There are threads here: Darrow’s fiddling usually has a Celtic tinge, and lots of guitar passages hail from African styles. Put with that the occasional arrivals of organ and of reggae beats, and the result is something you might expect to hear in the pubs of a post-national moon colony.
Expect highly focused tunes that might, at any moment, depart into dub-drenched instrumental passages, Irish reels, or organ jams. There are vocals throughout, but they are interspersed between all those exuberant instrumental excursions.
If there’s anything to criticize on this sparkling EP, it may only be the jarring conflict of happy, upbeat Afro-pop/Celtic fiddling and the lyrics “Now I worry like I never did before/ Ain’t got no home in this world any more” through almost all of the Tinkers’ version of the Woodie Guthrie tune “I Ain’t Got No Home.” But with music that consistently fizzes and pops with unexpected textures and turns, that’s nitpicking.
