Mundo Musique: Trampled By Turtles release "Wild Animals"

This week, Minnesota based bluegrass and folk band Trampled By Turtles released their seventh record, Wild Animals. Trampled By Turtles have been around for about eleven years, and over that time they’ve become one of the more popular artists in a genre that keeps gaining more and more popularity lately. A lot of that is thanks to the festival circuit, which Trampled By Turtles have been kings of, playing Newport Folk, Bonnaroo, Austin City, among many others, and will headline their own Palomino festival, which is named after their fifth record.

Wild Animals starts out with the title track, “Wild Animals” and you immediately know what you’re in for with Wild Animals. It’s actually a pretty stunning track, and makes a case that Trampled By Turtles have some of the most impressive harmonies you’ll hear on record this year. “Repetition” is another stunner, it’s a bit more indie than it is folk. Well, besides the fiddle, banjo, and acoustic guitar, it’s the delivery, and it’s fantastic, and truly an epic track, with its ending refrain of “over and over again”. About halfway through Wild Animals “Come Back Home” kicks the record into pure fingerpickin’ banjo bluegrass mode, and it’s a perfect change of pace after a few slower paced tracks. Wild Animals is a beautiful record, and it has a fitting closer, “Winners”, after two faster paced tracks “Western World” and “Nobody Knows”. “Winners” ties Wild Animals together into one fantastic package, that stands up to some of their best stuff. If you’re a fan of contemporary folk music, especially stuff I post about, like Gregory Alan Isakov or Ben Sollee and you haven’t given Trampled By Turtles a listen, get your hands on Wild Animals, you will not be disappointed.