The Hillbenders - Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry

4/5
Review:

Interesting, well done and excellent in parts

A bluegrass Tommy, played in its entirety on just acoustic guitar, banjo, Dobro, mandolin and bass and with a Country swing and shuffle - you're kidding, right? Well, no they're not. The Hillbenders are a very fine bunch of musicians who treat Pete Townshend's music and the whole of this masterwork with respect, and who play and sing it very well. It's not entirely successful as a whole, but it's great in places and a really interesting take on a rock classic.

I am, sadly, old enough to have loved Tommy from the moment it was first released in 1969 and I've listened to it countless times since then, in its original version and in its other forms. I don't think the original has ever been improved on, and the same applies here, but just listening to the Overture here really shows the depth of Townshend's musical creativity. Without the huge, driving rock sound, you can see the musical architecture clearly and it's magnificent, and that's true in a lot of places throughout the album and I enjoyed that aspect of it a lot.

Other bits don't work so well, though - soon after the great Overture, at the end of It's A Boy (effectively operatic recitative) the line "A son! A son! A son!" just sounds weak and a bit pointless without its great Kit Lambert production. And that's also true in a lot of places - notably in the great finale where the magnificent, spine-tingling final drive of "Listening to you..." is, frankly, a bit feeble here and needs far more to make it work. I also found that the whole thing when played through began to get a bit samey whereas individual bits listened to on their own were often very good - which is, of course, a problem for a cohesive, continuous work like Tommy. (Oh, and because you're almost certainly wondering, Pinball Wizard is a quirky shock to the system, but I think it's really good.)

Overall, then, an interesting rather than a brilliant album, but one which I'm glad to have heard and will probably come back to parts of at least. If you love Tommy, don't be put off by the apparent oddness - this is proper, respectfully done stuff with fine vocals and instrumental work. I can recommend it - you might be surprised at how good at least some of it is.