Chicago Tribune

January 16, 1998

Friday Section

Album Review

By David Royko

Matt Flinner: The View From Here (Compass) ***1/2

Currently in singer Judith Edelman's group, mandolinist Matt

Flinner's earlier band, Sugarbeat, was more in line with the sound on

"The View From Here," his first solo album. Inhabiting a musical genre

that is still, after two decades, in search of a name--new acoustic,

progressive bluegrass, newgrass, they've all been tried--Flinner takes

the softer-centered, no-banjo approach that will be familiar to David

Grisman's dawgies, but maintains more of the traditional tones and

conventional structures than his jazzier mandolin brethren. His basic

ensemble here is a trio with bassist Todd Phillips and guitarist David

Grier, augmented on each track by fiddle, dobro or bouzouki. With a

mild yet pervasive Celtic flavor detectable on most of these ten

original instrumentals, maybe we should call this "Worldgrass."

David Duckman [David Royko]

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