Lil Smokies - Break of the Tide

Break of the Tide is the last album The Lil Smokies will ever make, eleven songs that close out a genuinely beloved run rather than fade away quietly.

The Montana band built their reputation on progressive bluegrass, dobro player Andy Dunnigan and fiddler Jake Simpson pushing the genre's boundaries further than most jamgrass acts dared, and this final record, recorded in Dallas-Fort Worth with producer Robert Ellis and featuring newer members Jean Luc Davis and Sam Armstrong-Zickefoose, deliberately widens the frame further still. The band has described the title as a turning point between old world and new, and it plays that way, spacious and contemplative rather than reaching for the high-energy picking that first made their name.

Lately opens the record in a genuinely reflective register, setting a tone the rest of the album mostly holds to. Ocean drifts furthest from straight bluegrass into something closer to folk-pop atmosphere. Montana Flower carries obvious weight given where the band actually formed, a clear-eyed goodbye disguised as a love letter to home, and Young & Hopeful closes the album on exactly the note its title promises, more grateful than mournful.

A farewell tour through Colorado followed this record out the door. Eleven songs is a strange but fitting way to end a career this well-loved.