Age suits Chatham County Line, who have been anxious to act older than their years from the moment they picked up stringed instruments. Founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1999, they once sounded like they might have been emissaries of a much earlier era, but with the passage of time, they’ve become less tethered to the past while expanding their vision of what Americana could be. After feinting toward heartland rock on 2020’s Strange Fascination, Chatham County Line turn moodier on Hiyo.
CCL vocalist/guitarist Dave Wilson co-produced the album with producer and music supervisor Rachel Moore, who in 2022 enlisted the group to serve as backing musicians on the set of George & Tammy, a Showtime series dramatizing the legacy of country icons George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Once filming was complete, Wilson returned the favor by convincing Moore to join the group in the studio. The album they created together feels appropriately cinematic, drifting from bluegrass picking and plaintive harmonies into territory where such distinctions cease to matter.
Chatham County Line still emphasize harmony, both vocal and instrumental, yet they appear newly eager to discover what lies beyond the borders of bluegrass. They place their emphasis neither on songs or fingerpicking, two cornerstones of the genre, but on atmosphere. Moore’s subtle use of studio effects gives Hiyo an almost painterly grain. The players ride meditative, melancholy chords that ebb and flow, reaching a pinnacle on the soft pulse of “Heaven,” which spends as much time receding as it does creeping ashore.
The desire to experiment occasionally leads them astray; Wilson’s writing on “Lone Ranger” gets bogged down in bedroom power dynamics. They’re better served by a lighter touch, like when they preserve the gendered lyrics in a haunted version of Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You.” The Cline cover is one of a handful of retro accents on Hiyo—the closing “Summerline” features Wilson crooning into a phased old-timey microphone—but Chatham County Line have never seemed less burdened by the past. They embrace electronics and melodies sweet enough to be classified as pop—on “Magic,” they do so simultaneously—and discover new spectral microtones lying within their combined voices. These impressionistic textures place the album in a netherworld that’s untethered from any specific time or place. There’s an unquantifiable restlessness at the heart of Hiyo that keeps the record just out of reach, hinting at territories both alien yet oddly comforting.
