Our Town

From blues to kiddie core, the year 2001 was an odyssey in local music. Backbeat writers remember the best.

Comments (0) Thursday, Jan 10 2002

Cindy Wonderful
24 of Her Greatest Hits Vol. 1
(Wonderground)
Cindy Wonderful busts out the cheap tape recorder, the effects pedal, the sampler and the acoustic guitar for this mental menagerie of widely varied -- and variously successful -- songs. A collection that veers far from the territory Wonderful covered most recently with the dadaesque hip-hop construct Rainbow Sugar, Greatest Hits is a confounding, chaotic and occasionally just plain pretty glimpse into the mind of a sometimes-local believer. -- Bond

Yonder Mountain String Band
Town by Town
(Frog Pad)
Boulder's kings of the sixty-minute bluegrass medley shatter perceptions with this pleasing, to-the-point recording. Town by Town's bare-bones tunes are largely short songs built on vintage structures, played with soul- and knee-slapping skill by Yonder's unplugged pickers. Sure, the band's mountain music includes textures more native to Colorado than Kentucky. But YMSB plays jam-grass that can tickle even the most patchouli-loathing Americana fan. -- Jones

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Armando Zuppa
Zupperman
A delightful, playful solo debut from the Italian-born leader of neo-traditional bluegrass outfit New Country Kitchen, Zupperman is a riotous romp through the hallowed lands of country-style picking. An exemplary banjo player with a flair for drama -- he casts himself as a superhero in the album's liner notes -- Armando Zuppa moves through Zupperman's nine songs with a confidence and agility that reveals him as a master of his instrument, his genre and, ahem, his cape. -- Bond