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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: The High Sheriffs’ “High Sheriffs”

And you thought the cops were selling all that confiscated greenery. Nope, they’ve been holed up behind locked doors, dampened towels keeping the light out and the smoke in while they burn the evidence. While the leaves curl and smoke, they’ve been listening to old-time tunes and lifting choice licks and themes from them. Once liberated, those musical notions float precariously upon clouds of confusion, bobbing in the wakes cut by swooning slide guitars navigating toward a Hawaiian island that only exists in dreams.

When they stumble, briskly played banjos smack them upright. This is the real sound of confusion; you know that they don’t know what they’ll do when legalization stalks their native northern Indiana. There’s old weird America, and new weird America, and somewhere in between there’s the High Sheriffs. And when they say dance, I suggest that you comply.

—Bill Meyer