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]