The Carolina Chocolate Drops' Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig, is out now. The Sunday Times says to "file under quality music." After a Boston show, the Boston Herald said "an evening spent in this young trio’s exciting presence proves they are really about one thing: entertainment." The reviewer described Rhiannon Giddens voice as "among the most dynamic, startling instruments" he has ever heard.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops' Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig, is out today in the UK, one day before the start of the band's UK tour at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for the Celtic Connections festival.
In a feature profile of the band, the Sunday Times says that, while the band's sets may feature plenty of traditional string-band music from the Piedmont of North Carolina, "this is a group determined to prove that the past is not another country." So, says writer Clive Davis, for the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the "vivacious potpourri" of music it makes, "file under quality music, rather than nostalgia." Read the article at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.
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The group closed out the first leg of its US tour, where the new album comes out February 16, with two shows in Massachusetts. After Saturday's show outside Boston, at the Somerville Theatre, the Boston Herald's Daniel Gewertz asserts that however the group's blend of the traditional and new is understood, "an evening spent in this young trio’s exciting presence proves they are really about one thing: entertainment."
Gewertz says the show was "hugely engaging," describing the trio as "multidimensional" and "frequently impressive." He singles out group member Rhiannon Giddens as the Drops' "secret weapon," praising her voice as "among the most dynamic, startling instruments this writer has ever heard ... so piercing, earthy and supple it ripped through the hall like a storm."
Read the concert review at bostonherald.com.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops return to the States for the next leg of the tour in late February. For more tour info, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. To pre-order the album in the US, with a full seven bonus tracks, visit nonesuch.com/store.
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