Banjo player Pete Wernick has been working the more progressive end of the bluegrass spectrum since his earliest days as a solo artist. His second solo album opens with a unique version of the classic fiddle tune “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” presented here as a banjo-flute duet. Elsewhere he debuts the harmonically twisty “Gnu Breakdown” and plays his banjo through a phase shifter on the otherwise traditionally-arranged Delmore Brothers tune “Life’s Too Short.”

– Rick Anderson