Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway: City of Gold review – gritty country with pyrotechnics

At a time when the gap between mainstream country and heavy rock is often just a southern drawl and a cowboy hat, give thanks for acts such as Molly Tuttle, who are keeping alive the spirit and sound of country’s grittier traditions. Renowned in bluegrass circles for her guitar-picking, the 30-year-old made her breakthrough with last year’s Crooked Tree, an album that combined dazzling playing with songs celebrating feminism and renegade pot farmers and protesting gentrification.

City of Gold continues seamlessly. Once more its songs are co-written with Ketch Secor from Old Crow Medicine Show and it’s co-produced by dobro star Jerry Douglas, a veteran of the “newgrass” scene of the 1970s. Recorded live in the studio, it’s chiefly a showcase for Tuttle’s stage band and their pyrotechnics on fiddle, mandolin and banjo alongside Tuttle’s virtuoso guitar. Their acrobatic playing sometimes masks the quality of the songwriting, say, on El Dorado, which recounts the deranged days of the California gold rush.

Equally upbeat are Down Home Dispensary, a call for pot legalisation, and Alice in the Bluegrass, which playfully relocates Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland to Kentucky. More touching are Yosemite, a lament for a dying marriage with guest vocalist Dave Matthews, and the sorrowful Goodbye Mary. A whirlwind set.