Chris Thile
Deceiver (Sugar Hill)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, January-February 2005

Best known for leading neo-bluegrass darlings Nickel Creek, Chris Thile spends most of Deceiver working to make that distinction entirely irrelevant. “Waltz for Dewayne Pomeroy” and “Jessamyn’s Reel” are both mandolin instrumentals, and “I’m Nowhere and You’re Everything” dips into the bluegrass toolkit as much as Modest Mouse’s “Bukowski” did, but otherwise, Deceiver is nothing more or less than a one-man pop album that owes more to Jon Brion than to Alison Krauss. It’s a good, if weird, one, at that; like Brion, Thile sounds like he’s in a mad scramble to get his ideas onto tape before they evaporate completely. “The Wrong Idea” and “On Ice” both follow snaky melodies and chord progressions until the electric guitars burst through, “Locking Doors” sounds like G. Love singing a jazz/hip-hop number as it falls apart and “Empire Falls” and “The Believer” offer up the mandolin as a credible power pop instrument. The result isn’t particularly cohesive, but the patchwork nature of the album seems appropriate considering the crazy-quilt charm of the individual songs.

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