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"Alternative country has its agreed-on pioneers &amp;#x2014; Nineties wheatfield-rock bands such as Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks. But a decade before there was a No Depression scene, there was the bold and bracing rural electricity of the Long Ryders, founded in Los Angeles in the early Eighties and associated with that city&amp;apos;s Paisley Underground, even though the band&amp;apos;s singer-guitarist, Sid Griffin, was Kentucky-born and a keen student of the iridescent-country strains of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Flying Burrito Brothers. (Griffin&amp;apos;s 1985 book, Gram Parsons &amp;#x2013; A Music Biography, was the first full-length study of the ex-Byrd and Burrito.) Griffin&amp;apos;s current band, the Coal Porters, has been going for nearly two decades &amp;#x2014; he and the group are now based in London &amp;#x2014; and has evolved from a deeper mining of the country in the Ryders&amp;apos; acid-tinted drive to a pure acoustic bluegrass written and played with natural &amp;#x2014; in Griffin&amp;apos;s case, native &amp;#x2014; flair on Durango (April 17 &amp;#x2013; April 30) (Prima Records). You can tell how live-in-the-studio these performances are: The traditional &amp;quot;Pretty Polly&amp;quot; opens with a false start, while Griffin and Carly Frey seem to be singing to each other across one mike in his surrender ballad &amp;quot;Lookin&amp;apos; for a Soft Place to Fall.&amp;quot; (The Porters recorded the album last year, in the two weeks of the subtitle, at the Colorado studio of Ryders producer Ed Stasium.) And Griffin&amp;apos;s belief that Bill Monroe and Neil Young are cut from the same North American granite is affirmed by the buoyant poignancy of the cover of Young&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;Like a Hurricane,&amp;quot; with Frey&amp;apos;s sawing and skydiving fiddle where his scouring guitar distortion would be &amp;#x2014; and sounding right at home."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/frickes-picks-a-long-ryders-kentucky-bluegrass-20100628>