Good Night Darling

Old-time, string band, roots—whatever you want to call it, it’s easy to play this kind of music badly. But Humboldt County’s Huckleberry Flint does it with depth and grace on its second offering, Good Night Darling. Timely and timelessly acoustic, the band plays sweet love songs (fiddler Marybeth Taylor’s two young’uns seem to be the inspiration for “Sweet Annabelle” and “Summertime Lullaby”) and reverent (“How Great Thou Art” and “Job”); but they really shine when they combine the two on “Carpenter,” which manages to be a ballad about both domestic happiness and salvation. They’ve got the melodies, harmonies and dobros to swashbuckle with an Old Crow or a Fogorn Stringband, but Huck Flint remain the Northern California music scene’s modest little sister and maybe its best-kept secret.