Chris Thile

Thile's fourth venture as a solo artist is the most impressive showcase of his musicianship: he plays all of the album's 39 instruments and goes way beyond the margins of bluegrass. The multimovement mini-suite of "The Wrong Idea" begins the genre-hurdling with a 'grass inflection one second and a big rock riff the next. "Locking Doors" is more or less a funk tune. Lyrically, the record's challenges are equally steep, with pointed dictums on faith ("The Believer") and fidelity.

He's got some of Jamie Cullum's sound, Bela Fleck's post-bluegrass virtuosity and Rufus
Wainwright's theatrical delivery, but on Deceiver, Chris Thile nearly enters rock-opera
territory -- Broadway style, orchestra and all -- if one guy playing more than twenty-five
instruments can be called an orchestra. On his fifth solo album, the twenty-three-year-old
Nickel Creek mandolinist crams classical, jazz, folk, rock and even a little bluegr... More >