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MOJO (★★★★): Eighty this year with five-and-a-half decades of LPs behind him, Smither sounds as good, maybe better than ever. The deft guitar-picking and floorboard-stomping are still there. So are his fine songs with their wry, wise, trenchant words, timeless melodies and languid ash-and-gravel voice. It opens with the title track, featuring a visit from the Grim Reaper – sparse folk-blues with an aptly skeletal arrangement from a small but perfect ensemble of electric guitar, drum, harmony singer and moody lone saxophone. There’s a great feel to the LP, like it was recorded in the dead of night in an old jazz bar beside a graveyard in New Orleans. There are two covers – Eliza Gilkyson’s lovely Calm Before The Storm; Tom Petty’s Time To Move On, the album closer – and eight originals, whose highlights include Completion, Down In Thibodaux, and beautiful ballad Still Believe In You.
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Smither has taken the blues in a direction entirely his own: stoic existential ruminations sung in a pained, weathered moan and set to quietly virtuosic guitar.
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Wise words pour forth from Chris Smither – observations and aphorisms, similes and internal rhymes, run-on sentences and concise quips, all in a conversational flow. The careful construction of Smither’s lyrics is a thing of beauty and the bedrock of his bluesy folk music. Smither is an excellent acoustic guitarist and first-rate foot-stomper.
PASTE: His new album, All About the Bones, is merely the latest in a long string of impressive, under-the-radar recordings. Unlike most of his singer-songwriter colleagues, Smither is a terrific guitarist. When he takes a guitar solo, its slinky blues melody is an enhancement of the lyrics, not a lull between verses. And the lyrics are full of surprises themselves.
POPMATTERS (8/10) – His self-penned lyrics are full of wit and wisdom sung in epigrammatic phrases. Like the blues artists he grew up admiring (Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins), he intones with an unhurried voice that suggests he’s letting you in on life’s secrets. One can hear the holy mysticism in the way Smither plays his guitar.
GLIDE MAGAZINE: There’s irony, wit, scorn, and clever wordplay, as we’d expect from this masterful songwriter… we remain rather spellbound.
ROCKING MAGPIE (UK): Chris Smither’s twentieth album opens with “All About The Bones” and is full to the brim. A fearless live performer and intelligent not only in his playing, that’s often as not, incredible, but his hypnotic grooves and wondrous textures are of a kind that keep listeners hooked until the very last note.
FOLK ALLEY – All About The Bones reveals once again how deftly Smither cuts to the chase in his songwriting, singing, and playing, peeling away layers of cultural cliché to expose the pulsing heart of the matter that animates human nature. Smither cuts to the bones of human relationship, revealing the ways that they crack and splinter as well as their tensile strength for enduring disappointment, loss.
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: [Smither] taps his foot to keep the rhythm, much like the late blues legend John Lee Hooker. His finger-picked guitar lines are sleek, unhurried and insistent. And then there’s the voice – equal parts gravel and molasses.
ROLLING STONE: Bathed in the flickering glow of passing headlights and neon bar signs, Smither’s roots are as blue as they come. There is plenty of misty Louisiana and Lightnin’ Hopkins in Smither’s weathered singing and unhurried picking. So fine.
OXFORD AMERICAN: It was that rhythmic push-and-pull, that New Orleans sensibility that made Smither stand out.
NEW YORK TIMES: With a weary, well-traveled voice and a serenely intricate finger-picking style, Mr. Smither turns the blues into songs that accept hard-won lessons and try to make peace with fate.
MAVERICK: Cast your mind back to the first time you heard Hank Williams, Big Bill Broonzy or JJ Cale and remember how good it felt. Think of the opening encounter with Leon Redbone or Leo Kottke. They say newcomers to Chris Smither’s brand of country blues-tinged southern folk experience those same emotions. It’s true.
AMERICANA MUSIC NEWS: There’s a tireless – arguably timeless – quality to Chris Smither’s work.
UNCUT (UK): Call Me Lucky careens confidently from lowdown acoustic blues to spry folk rock, riffing and jangling with a sense of urgency and purpose.
BLUES MAGAZINE (NL): Smither remains one of those truly rare things, a writer and singer with a remarkable eye for oddities and references that cross genres from roots to jazzy underpinnings and blues.
HIFI & RECORDS (DE): A high-class collection of contemplative and long-lasting songs. Absolutely a worthwhile discovery!
THE AUSTRALIAN: Stoical and sometimes nihilistic reflections on the meaning of life flow fluently from a gruff, world-weary voice that falls somewhere between Bob Dylan and JJ Cale. Groove is of the essence for this acclaimed guitarist, whose propulsive Delta blues-influenced finger picking is augmented by trademark foot percussion.
INDEPENDENT (UK): Chris Smither may be Americana’s most underrated talent, offering acute observations about life’s bitter ironies in a baritone drawl as worn as antique leather, its weary tone belied by the sprightliness of his fingerstyle guitar.
MONTREAL GAZETTE: With his Southern-drawl, tapping foot in constant motion and fingers pulling fluid blues patterns from his acoustic guitar, Smither is an engaging, sometimes intense singer-songwriter who can convert almost any audience he sits down in front of.
VANCOUVER PROVINCE: … in the tradition of his influences such as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt as well as his late contemporaries Townes Van Zandt, Tim Hardin and Tim Buckley.
WASHINGTON POST: His songbook is overflowing with rollicking, clever blues-based folk tunes, and he has been a consistently engaging live performer for more than four decades.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: The never-precious lyrics make for elegantly stripped-down adages, steeped in the wisdom, hardships, joy and disappointments of real life……blending self-deprecating humor with rich kernels of poignant, often piercingly honest emotion.
MOJO (★★★★★): Hundred Dollar Valentine is a thing of profound beauty; deep, sad, wise songs, allied to perfectly crafted arrangements, from a man who’s live long enough in darkness to address the big, heavy questions with a lightness of touch.