Nickel Creek - Celebrants

"My God it's good to see you..." That first line from Nickel Creek's seventh album Celebrants likely prophesies the warm response awaiting the Americana-bluegrass group's first all-new release in nine years. While the Grammy-winning trio of singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalists Sara Watkins (fiddle), Sean Watkins (guitar), and Chris Thile (mandolin) had sporadically collaborated since 2014's A Dotted Line, a 2020 interview pegged to the 20th anniversary of Nickel Creek's debut album ignited a spark. "It was fun to have a reason to wax nostalgic about some stuff that we'd done," says Thile. "And then when we got together, it was just so clear, 'Oh, yeah, we've got some new music to make.'" They certainly did. The long layoff yielded a bounty of 18 interconnected songs written collectively during a creative retreat in Santa Barbara in early 2021. The tracks form a mosaic that is beautiful from a distance, but each tile also tells it's own story.