Review: Kitchen Dwellers- 'Seven Devils'

Bluegrass has a lot of common themes. Liquor, poverty, infidelity manual labor, and the devil are just a few. Dante Alighieri's epic poem “The Divine Comedy” isn't one of those common themes. But perhaps it should be. Many of those common bluegrass themes can be found in the Seven Deadly Sins, a large part of Aligheri's work. On their new concept album Seven Devils, Kitchen Dwellers explores the seven deadly sins, and some others, with gusto.

Aside from a brief instrumental “Prelude,” Seven Devils begins and ends with alternate versions of the title track. The opener, “Seven Devils (Limbo)” is a six minute slab of jamgrass goodness, featuring not only the standard bluegrass instruments, but also the Buchla synthesizer. Bettering that is the album closer “Seven Devils (Full Version)” which is a ten minute jamgrass clinic, using the same lyrics but stretching the instrumental interludes even further. As for those lyrics, it's a great way to bookend a story of the Seven Deadly Sins. “I might return an unclean spirit seeking rest,” vocalist Joe Funk belts, “a breath of old-fashioneds and foreign cigarettes.” Later, he insists “Let's start digging holes before my demons come / Make seven canyons for to bury each one.”

Aside from “Seven Devils,” the album's highlight track is “Waterford Son (II).” Tackling the second Deadly Sin, greed, it's the tale of an Irish immigrant who gets tied up in gang activity and eventually the westward expansion. With a Celtic vibe throughout (courtesy of Dermot Sheedy's bodhran and Doug Berch's penny whistle), it's a lyrically dense song without a chorus, but it works. A chorus would break up the storyline and the story is the sell here.

Another winner is as brief as “Seven Devils” is long. “Meagher's Reel (I)” explores Pride, the first deadly sin, in the best way possible, with barely a minute of pure Celtic virtuosity. Pride might be a sin in places, but Kitchen Dwellers have plenty of reason to be proud with skills like this.

Album single “Pendulum (V)” finds the band musing on addiction, and addiction replacement. “I’ve long had a theory that everyone has a baseline addictive tendency that must be satisfied, and it is up to the mind to decide at which point on the 'good' and 'bad' spectrum that habit is chosen,” Funk says in the album's press release, and the song's lyrics bear that up. “It ain't easy being sober in the life that we chose / Vices swing like diamonds on a pendulum.”

Seven Devils is a bold undertaking for any band. The material is weighty and concept albums are hit or miss in roots music as a whole. Kitchen Dwellers score a definite hit here. If you can call any album about the Nine Levels of Hell fun, this one is it.

Seven Devils releases March 1 on No Coincidence Records.