Though so much of A Hawk and a Hacksaw's Balkan folk-inspired music is tied to a particular sound from a particular place, the passion they imbue into their performances seems to know no bounds. On Cervantine, their latest, Hacksaw principals Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost have expanded both their sound and their scope, expanding their sonic search further into southeastern Europe, making connections between what they've heard on their vast European travels and the sounds of their New Mexico home, transforming disparate (occasionally transcontinental) styles into something rich and rousing. Rooted as their music is to geography, the feelings A Hawk and a Hacksaw conjure on Cervantine are borderless.
In their recent travels between home and abroad, Barnes and Trost took note of an earlier bit of musical cross-pollination: Through Mexican soap operas, the mariachi horns well familiar to the Southwesterners had made their mark on Eastern European music, seeping into the fiery Romany brass endogenous to the Balkan region. You can hear it in the rollicking "Espanola Kolo", which matches its trumpet flare-ups with an accordion rush, sounding like two musical cultures speaking to each other. These sorts of juxtapositions are all over Cervantine; the sinewy "Mana Thelo Enan Andra" was specifically arranged to feature both traditionally Greek and Turkish instruments, with a stunning vocal turn from collaborator Stephanie Hladowski. Again, you don't necessarily need to be able to suss out any of these stylistic differences or geographical vagaries to dig into Cervantine, but you'll appreciate the expanded palette; their take on Balkan folk, more clearly displayed on their earlier records, tended towards the mournful and histrionic, but their newfound influences tend to be livelier in tone, and the blend results in the band's most balanced record to date, forlorn and lonesome one minute, boisterous and heady the next. Cervantine's 40 minutes feel far longer than they are, which is to its credit; when it's over, you're left exhausted, as though you've really been taken someplace.
Recorded on a two-track I'd wager has a little dust in the works, Cervantine has the lively, off-the-cuff feel of a field recording, or a pick-up performance from a traveling band. The unadorned sound does a nice job of offsetting the turn-on-a-dime technicality of some of these performances; Barnes, Trost, and their temporary ensemble knock out every one of their instrumental turns, but their virtuosity never feels showy like a more sterile documentation of the same sounds might. When the central melody of hard-charging opener "No Rest for the Wicked" drops from a full-band romp to a lone accordion, this inversion of energy proves every bit as thrilling as when they start to swarm anew. Each instrument is played with wit and tenderness alike, and great care has been put into these tricky arrangements. There's strength and delicacy alike in these melodies, be they Barnes and Trost's originals or their reconfigurations of traditional songs.
But what sets A Hawk and a Hacksaw apart from so many other note-perfect revivalists is their passion, which turns up in every note on Cervantine. That Barnes and Trost really love this music is clear, but that they seem almost possessed by it makes for something else entirely. Just as their music goes far beyond mere imitation, their performances seem to push past spirited, compelled not simply to observe or replicate but to create as well, driven by devotion to the sounds they've heard and the ideas they inspire. Though they'd likely be the first to tell you how much they still have to learn, Cervantine's ravishing exploration of sound is another step towards mastery.
