I stumbled across this review of Tangleweed’s new record, Where You Been So Long?, on a Belgian website: ctrlaltcountry.be. Being a hopeless monoglot, and lacking a Dutch speaker in our group, we ran it through babelfish to get an inkling of what is says.

Tangleweed is een vijf man sterk collectief uit Chicago, dat zopas met “Where You Been So Long?” een album heeft afgeleverd dat in kringen van liefhebbers van zowel folk, bluegrass als (old-timey) Americana op termijn wellicht voor menig een brede grijns goed zal blijken. Billy Oh (fiddle, zang), Kenneth P.W. Rainey (mandoline, het gros van de lead vocals), Paul Wargaski (contrabas, zang), Timothy Ryan Fisher (banjo, zang) en Scott Judd (akoestische gitaar, zang) serveren daarop immers een hoogst aanstekelijk brouwsel gebaseerd op elementen uit elk van de voornoemde en andere genres. Eigen deunen worden erop afgewisseld met erg knappe uitvoeringen van klassieke bluegrassdeunen, old-time country songs en Ierse deuntjes. Soms rockt het allemaal lekker weg (“Hard Times”), elders domineren invloeden als hot jazz (“I Found A New Baby”), mountain music (“High On A Mountain”), Ierse folk (“Sir Lucas De Sommerville / The Musical Priest / Whiskey Before Breakfast”) en bluegrass (“Black Eyed Susie”) het gebeuren. Een occasionele ballad (“Leaving Of Liverpool”, “Last Call Waltz”) en een speels bluesje (“Drunkard’s Blues”) ronden het knap gevarieerde geheel af. Wij lusten hier wel pap van!

Folks in BeNeLux have been very, very good to us (at least Belgium and the Netherlands have…we haven’t gotten a foothold in Luxembourg yet). Fortunately, they speak much better english than we do, because all the languages I can’t speak get jumbled up in my head, and things like “Ca va bien. Vie Gehts?” come out of my mouth. Anyway, here’s the review run through AltaVista’s babelfish translation engine:

Tangleweed are five men strong collective from Chicago, which just now with “Where You leg So lung?” an album has delivered that in rings of liefhebbers of both folk, bluegrass and (old-timey) Americana in the long run possibly for many a broad grijns well will appear. Billy Oh (fiddle, song), Kenneth P.W. Rainey (mandoline, gros of lead vocal), Paul Wargaski (contrabas, song), Timothy Ryan Fisher (banjo, song) and Scott Judd (acoustic jet ear, song) serve then a highest contagious brouwsel based on elements from each of the aforementioned and other genres. Own deunen are varied with very nice implementation of traditional bluegrassdeunen, old-time country songs and Irish deuntjes. Sometimes rockt it all nicely gone (”hard Times”), elsewhere dominate influences such as hot jazz (”I Found a New baby”), mountain music (”high On a Mountain”), Irish folk (”Sir Lucas Sommerville/The musical Priest/Whiskey Before Breakfast”) and bluegrass (”Black Eyed Susie”) happening. Occasinal ballad (”Leaving or Liverpool”, “charge Call Waltz”) and playful bluesje (”Drunkard’s blues”) wind up it cleverly varied whole. We like of this, however, pulp!

Here’s the same text run through the very entertaining multiple translation engine, lost in translation:

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