Billy Strings - Highway Prayers

Since its inception, bluegrass has always been more than just the trilling roll of a banjo, the eviscerating cry of a fiddle and the outpouring of well-worn regionalisms. The style has always been more about feeling, the seemingly simplest of songs packing the power and emotion attributed to its high, lonesome sound.

With his latest album, Highway Prayers, Billy Strings takes listeners down the road a-ways where his brand of progressive bluegrass is just that. More than simply a wash of impressive sounds, his songs are rather vehicles for feeling even the most confounding of emotions, his casual words imparting grounded wisdom for this journey we’re all on.

From the moment he opens the 20-track release with the exuberant ‘Leaning on a Travelin’ Song’, the six-string savant has something to say, often about the one thing that weighs heaviest: uncertainty.

The artist ponders brighter days ahead on the soul-wearied epic, ‘In the Clear’, considers what awaits him at the end of the road on the a capella opus ‘Richard Petty’, or simply tunes in to what the birds have to sing about it all on the acid-dipped ballad, ‘Gild the Lily’. Even some of the collection’s stirring instrumentals, such as ‘Seney Stretch’ and ‘Malfunction Junction’, carry with them a kind of assuredness and sense of peace.

Highway Prayers, however, is not entirely entrenched in emotion. In fact, a Strings album would not be complete without a ‘Dust in a Baggie’-esque banger or two, like the smoldering down-and-out ditty, ‘Seven Weeks in County’, or the dreamily toked-up tune, ‘MORBUD4ME’.

Simply put, the album finds the artist pushing expectations, the record as a whole beautifully spotlighting his too-often-overshadowed lyricism alongside his masterful picking. Highway Prayers is a gorgeous extension of the artist’s work in shaping bluegrass for a modern audience.

All in all, the album is a comfort, a salve for when the road ahead is long, hard and unforgiving. There may not be a single one of us who knows what we’re doing in this life, but with this batch of songs, Strings suggests an alternate route, one paved with forgiveness, understanding, hope and a few highway prayers.

9/10

Billy Strings 2024 project, Highway Prayers, is available everywhere now via Reprise Records.

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