Bill FrisellThe WilliesReview

Ostensibly a jazz guitarist, Bill Frisell is currently blurring the accepted boundaries between genres. In much the same way as rock bands such as Wilco or Giant Sand are chiselling from what some would regard as the opposite end, Frisell has, starting with hints on earlier albums, blossomed into as much a country gent as a chin-stroking jazzer. Albeit one who will never don the stetson and tread the boards of the Opry.

From the aforementioned hints, Bill finally came out of the rustic closet and grasped the country horns with both hands on his 1995 album Nashville. Featuring dobro genius Jerry Douglas, it confirmed what those in the know had guessed long before - that Bill was a genuwine country picker. Subsequent releases never shied from the agenda. 2000's Ghost Town featured Hank's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" while last year's Blues Dream seemed to exist in the lonely 3am spaces that separate Blues, Jazz and Country. With impeccable timing he now brings us The Willies - his bluegrass album.

Assisted only by Danny Barnes on Banjo and Keith Lowe on Bass, this is of course Frisell's own take on the flavour du jour. If you come to this little number expecting to hear the manic attack of Union Station or even the traditional jauntiness of say, Bill Monroe, you'll be disappointed. This is a gentle, almost ambient album, redolent of a summer's day picnicking in a meadow, as opposed to a good old knees-up 'round a jug of something illicit.

Starting with a take on Howlin' Wolf's "Sittin' On Top Of The World", they proceed to mix originals with standards (again, Hank's "Cold, Cold Heart") in a deceptively loose, jamming format. Simple chord progressions propel fluid guitar lines over the heads of riffing banjo and bass. These tunes go back to the very heart of extemporisation; the very root of Jazz itself. "Cluck Little Hen" places Bill's improvisations back in the farmyard where it all began. Indeed, history is breathing softly but steadily down the necks of each of these little treasures, particularly on the Carter Family's "John Hardy Was A Desperate Little Man".

It'll take a few listens before you fully grasp the strength in this approach, and at 16 tracks the album commits the cardinal crime of modern recorded music: it hangs around a little too long. Nevertheless, The Willies has more than enough charm to overcome such shortcomings. Downhome and tasty!