This Side (CD - 2002)

Nickel Creek: Chris Thile (vocals, guitar, bouzouki, mandolin); Sean Watkins (vocals, guitar); Sara Watkins (vocals, fiddle, strings).

Additional personnel: Byron House (acoustic bass); Edgar Meyer (arco bass).

Recorded at Emerald Sound, Seventeen Grand, The Brown Cloud Studios, Nashville, Tennessee.

THIS SIDE won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

"Smoothie Song" was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

Personnel: Chris Thile (vocals, guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, strings); Sean Watkins (vocals, guitar); Sara Watkins (vocals, fiddle, strings); Byron House (acoustic bass); Edgar Meyer (upright bass).

Audio Mixer: Gary Paczosa.

Recording information: Seventeen Grand, Emerald Sound Studio, The Brown Cloud,.

Editor: Tracy Martinson.

Illustrator: Terry Hoff.

Photographer: John Chiasson.

Arrangers: Chris Thile; Sean Watkins; Sara Watkins .

This Side, Nickel Creek's sophomore release, finds bandmembers Chris Thile, Sara Watkins, and Sean Watkins out of their teens and into their twenties after playing together for 12 years. The southern California band's self-titled debut received wide critical acclaim for welding jazz, rock, and classical music to a bluegrass base. But This Side solidifies Nickel Creek's position as the single most original and inventive bluegrass band to emerge in the early '00s. Hardcore bluegrass fans wary of experimentation or even progressive bluegrass may scoff at this claim. But, when it comes down to it, the gorgeous, open production by Alison Krauss gives Nickel Creek's guitars, mandolins, and fiddles the space to dance through sparkling and genuine arrangements. Covers of everything from Pavement's rollicking Terror Twilight highlight, "Spit on a Stranger," to Carrie Newcomer's scathing folk "Should've Known Better" to the traditional "House Carpenter" are given elegant and unique twists. Plus, Thile and the Watkins siblings' originals, like the sleepy, subtle "Speak" and the darker "Beauty and the Mess," easily outdo the likes of folk-rockers Dave Matthews and Hootie & the Blowfish, while forging a new style to rejuvenate a genre that has always been a bit of a dark horse. It's decidedly more pop than post-rock-gone-folk outfits like Papa M, David Grubbs, Palace, and Miighty Flashlight, and lacks the rock & roll flash of Ryan Adams. But Nickel Creek's music is endlessly rewarding nonetheless, and accessible to just about everyone. ~ Charles Spano

When they first made their nationwide splash with their 2000 debut album, teen bluegrass group Nickel Creek were one of the biggest mainstream crossovers since their producer/mentor Alison Krauss, successfully modernizing their tradition-conscious genre. The follow-up THIS SIDE finds the trio largely moving away from bluegrass altogether, though retaining the same spare acoustic instrumentation. A straight-ahead cover of alt-rock legends Pavement's "Spit on a Stranger" offers the first clue that this isn't exactly Bill Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys. Nickel Creek doesn't need to look to outside material for genre exploration, though. "Green and Gray" seems to bear a debt to the Dave Matthews Band (or at least John Mayer), while "Should've Known Better" is in a hip-hop-inflected R&B mode, and the title track could be a gentler moment from the archives of Tonic or Third Eye Blind. There are a few tracks sprinkled throughout the album that nod to the band's beginnings, and in these (particularly the evocative version of the traditional "House Carpenter" and the sprightly instrumental opener "Smoothie Song") a possible future for bluegrass may be glimpsed. minimize