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. Timely and timelessly acoustic, the band plays sweet love songs (fiddler Marybeth Taylor’s two young’uns seem to be the inspiration for “Ballad of Sweet Annabelle” and “Summertime Lullaby”) and reverent spirituals like “How Great Thou Art” and “Job.” But they really shine when managing to combine the two, as on “Carpenter,” a ballad about both domestic happiness and salvation. They’ve got the melodies, harmonies and dobros to swashbuckle with an Old Crow or a Foghorn Stringband, but Huck Flint remains the NorCal music scene’s modest little sister and maybe its best-kept secret.