This is a fantastic album of great acoustic music, played fabulously well by awesome players. Tony Rice especially, plays some exquisite, exciting guitar lines throughout this record. His playing is powerful, clean, and crystal clear. You can feel his love of this music, and he absolutely tears it up. Is there anything less than pure gold here? Well, it's only 35 minutes long - a bit on the short side. Musically my only complaint would be against the rhythm accompaniment, which on a few ocassions gets a little bit repetitive. After the same chord progression has gone around for about the 10th time, I tend to really miss the subtlety that a jazz musician would bring to the proceedings. The chords and bass-lines seem to be banged out in the same fashion over and over again in a few spots. But this is only a slight disappointment. It's not as if there's no subtlety at all here; there's plenty. And anyway, this complaint is outweighed by the fine, fine playing of Tony Rice, and by that of his terrific band-mates Richard Greene and Fred Carpenter on violin, and John Reischman on mandolin. You must check out the terrific tunes and the great playing on this wonderful album!
Recommended for anyone who likes acoustic music and outstanding acoustic instrumentation. Even if you think you don't, Tony can make you a convert. Tony Rice takes his experience with David Grisman's Dawg music and moves it ahead with the "Unit." This CD is as fresh and new as when I first heard it on vinyl. A fine addition to Acoustics, Mar West/Devlin, and other Unit offerings.
Tony is probably the most innovative, tuneful, tasteful, and musically diverse flatpick guitarist on the planet- paving the way for others, crossing genres from straight ahead bluegrass, popular and "roots" music and jazz. This is a tasteful, melodic, jazz album so you don't hear Tony's rich baritone like some of his other albums, but you do hear great tone and musicality on a well chosen set-list.