"Fascinated by the Appalachian Mountain sounds that echoed through her coastal North Carolina home", Gantt dodges many of the cliches of Appalachian folk, while managing to embrace the sparse acoustic feel that makes it a unique style. The EP title represents a personal shift in Gantt's life, that led to her leaving behind old patterns of living that included giving up drinking alcohol and addressing her belief systems.
This atmospheric misty music doesn't have the fast pace delivery that often comes with Bluegrass based music, but on tunes like The reckoning hangs on to the mystic quality that inhabits much of the music from this part of America. She calls herself "Americana-Soul" and that's a good description. There is a gospel feel to the delivery of the Reckoning over a backing that comes into focus with Devin Lacey's fiddle solo.
We Got Time has a more traditionally Appalachian sound, led by Banjo and fiddle. Also following more typically Bluegrass patterns is the single Fine, where she is reaching the end of her exploration of her life, and concludes, "everything will turn out fine".
The final song of the EP is sparser, just Gantt, some harmonies and a guitar to start gently expands to include the fiddle and moves the pace up slightly, giving the song and the whole EP a satisfying resolution.
While her website indulges in some fairly high grade hyperbole, but in a revealing moment she says; "Giving up alcohol was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it cracked my world wide open." If that journey left us with this EP, and hopefully more music like it to come then it was a worthwhile step to take.
Tim Martin