Orange Mighty Trio take a musical roadtrip on "Infrastructure"

​The music on Orange Mighty Trio's sophomore release, Infrastructure, ranges from the quiet, contemplative mood of opener "Point A" to the propulsive, restless urgency of "Driving With Your Eyes Open" to the chugging, train-inspired jump blues of "Orange Line," but no matter the tempo or approach, their music is always shot through with a tinge of Old World nostalgia. Part of it is down to the instrumentation: a piano, a violin, and a bass playing together without rhythm instruments are inevitably going to sound a little wistful, a throwback to simpler times. But a lot of it comes down to their gentle, way with a fragile melody, as on standout track "Convergence."

The track begins with violoinist Zack Kline playing a ragged descending line that slips in and out of double stops, fading and swelling in a way that's half-sleepy, half-mournful. When bassist Nick Gaudette falls in behind him with bowed bass, the floor of the tune rises up to meet that lonely melody and a kind of tentative balance is reached. What's arresting, then, is how pianist Mike Vasich enters the tune, a hair after the music seems to ask him to, with two tiny, hesitant chords. It complicates and colors that balance between the violin and the bass, and it would be easy enough for the piano to come in and take over much more sonic space--I've heard it happen before all too often. But that sensitivity to maintaining an imperfect balance, or maybe a perfect imbalance, is what gives the Orange Mighty Trio's music its uniquely plangent character.

They call their music "bluegrassical"--and "Orange Line" certainly fits that description--but there's something more at work here than that catchy sobriquet would imply. The album's construction around the theme of travel (other song titles include "Off Ramp," "Northbound," and "Interchange") ties it inevitably to the Phillip Glass/Kronos Quartet collaboration Different Trains and if anything, the group is more closely related to the avant-garde tradition than the classical one. The folk aspects of their music seem more Appalachain than bluegrass, particularly without the driving rhythm of acoustic flatpicking or the plinky insistence of banjo.