Though it’s never been known for the genre, Milwaukee has always hosted bluegrass in all of its many forms, from purist, string-band bluegrass, to rowdy, punked-out bluegrass and jammy, Deadhead-minded bluegrass. It shows how versatile the genre is that the Milwaukee quintet Paladino doesn’t slot cleanly into any of those camps. Instead, on their new EP Bellows, the group uses the precise, technically minded bluegrass-pop of Chris Thile as a starting point and branches off from there. With three songwriters in the group, they cover a lot of ground, leaping from a summery, heartland pop tune like “Mint Condition” to the wild, tumultuous “When Two Black Holes Collide,” which imagines what Queen might have sounded like if they were an acoustic act with a mandolin.
You can stream the album at Paladino’s website and below ahead of an album release show at Club Garibaldi in Saturday, April 16 at 9 p.m. with opener Shelly Schauer. (And no, it isn’t lost on us that a band one character away from being named Palamino will be playing their release show at the bar directly across the street from the Palamino.)
