Like good musical ramblers, the Tin Hat Trio traveled around the world on their first two albums, Memory Is an Elephant and Helium. Theirs was a tango that could fill classical music's archways. A jazz that melded continents. With The Rodeo Eroded, the San Francisco-based threesome heads home. Rob Burger's accordions, piano, and myriad acoustic keyboards, Carla Kihlstedt's violin and viola, and Mark Orton's twangy guitar and Dobro take the Rodeo on a Great American Music Tour. "Bill" opens the album with a bluesy, waltz-like slow jam that Kihlstedt violins through with long-stroked dramatic flair. From there, Rodeo has the feel of a great, cinematic drama. Drunken, percussive piano marks "Holiday Joel" before a woozy take on "Willow Weep for Me" emerges from the mist with Willie Nelson(!) emoting atop a sagebrush orchestral mesa. A horse clip-clops in the form of Orton's guitar on "The Last Cowboy," just as Morricone might have envisioned. There are great, wobbly chase scenes, circus tumbles, and a host of Americanisms that bounce in, kick it up, and split with a sonic impression of the desert's parched stretches and the boundless madness of a simply warped community dance. --Andrew Bartlett
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