"Here we go. 1 - 2. 1 - 2 - 3" So starts Down To You the opening track to Love and Dirt the fifth studio album from Boston "all star" band Session Americana. You'd expect no lesser beginning from a session; a traditional start from an assemble of top notch musicians swapping traditional songs and trading licks on old acoustic instruments. Well, that's not exactly what you get on this album. Making Hay, for example, employs a little vocal trickery to good effect adding a little menace to what might otherwise be an amiable shuffle. The atmospherics are cranked up on Easier (and it's preceding Intro). In fact, once you get past Raking Through The Ashes - the albums third track - things take on a bluesy / jazzy direction; not really roots or americana at all. But theirs is a "playfully irreverent take on roots with an edgy experimental side". I'm not too sure if you could call Love and Dirt edgy (I'm actually not sure if any music could be called edgy) but it would be too easy for musicians of this calibre to sit back and conform to a genre specific style, or experiment too much and forget about producing an albums worth of songs worth listening to. Session Americana do things in their own way: they are a class act. - John 'The Jacket' Hawes