“We never learn, we never learn, we let it burn, we close our eyes, ignore the signs, we’re out of time” sing Pert Near Sandstone on ‘Out of Time‘ the latest single from the St. Paul/ Minneapolis string band’s eight album ‘Waiting Days‘ which is released today. Where Pert Near Sandstone differ from many other string bands is that their focus is not on the past, they are definitely in the here and now and looking down the tracks to the near future. ‘Out of Time‘ exemplifies this aspect of the band as they riff on the short-sightdeness of mankind, who’ll endlessly it seems argue an issue back and forth whilst that same issue just gets on with overwhelming all debate. The first thought here is climate change, but all sorts of political leg dragging on issues like gun control, pollution, forest fires are ticked off as left unaddressed whilst the important issue of increasing profits just a bit more continues to be the pre-eminent concern. Is it a message of despair and doom? Yeah, that is exactly what it is.
Pert Near Sandstone’s four songwriters/vocalists are also all instrumentalists: Justin Bruhn (bass), Kevin Kniebel (banjo), J Lenz (guitar), and Nate Sipe (mandolin, steel guitars, fiddle) -write songs that speak to the present and are rife with allusions – spanning a breadth of content including traveling songs, concerns of the modern era, and surrealistic scenarios.
