“Palomino,” the last album from Duluth, Minn., acoustic rockers Trampled By Turtles, was the perfect distillation of punk, rock and bluegrass, a hardcore declaration of war that caused a gentle mosh pit to break out during the band’s show last year in Nashville.
The band’s sixth album, “Stars and Satellites” (Thirty Tigers), is a very different record, cut with a diamond drill rather than forged by hammer. Its 11 songs are written from a different set of emotions‚ a winter album to the summer ramble of “Palomino.” The song titles tip the band’s hand: “Midnight on the Interstate,” “Alone,” “High Water,” “Risk” and “Widower’s Heart.”
Songwriter Dave Simonett casts the mood in opener “Midnight,” a song about coming home and finding things a mess. Then comes “Alone” and its wordless chorus that invites all those lone wolves out there to join in.
“Stars and Satellites” is the kind of album you write when you reach a point that you’re thinking deeply about the mysteries of life‚ childbirth and family, love and loss, life and death. There are a handful of uptempo tunes, including the fiery instrumental “Risk,” but all are touched in some way, some by sadness.
The band chucked its all-live-all-the-time ethos for this album and matched Simonett’s lyrics in the studio with a rich color scheme of sounds.
“Widower’s Heart” is every bit as beautiful as “Midnight” and “Alone” and conveys a deep sense of depression: “I can’t help it if I have a widower’s heart/I try to get out of bed but I can’t seem to start.”
“Stars and Satellites” is more proof TBT should be mentioned in the same breath as other roots rockers like Old Crow Medicine Show or Mumford & Sons, who are doing something very different with old sounds they’ve found.
Trampled By Turtles performs at the Rockygrass Festival in July in Lyons.