The Crooked Jades are honored to be featured on the cover of the Jan/Feb 2009 double issue of the prestigious UK magazine fRoots devoted to the new Americana:
- Devon Sproule
- Carolina Chocolate Drops
- The Crooked Jades
- Rupa & The April Fishes
- Corey Harris
- Seasick Steve
- The Pine Leaf Boys
- Lissa Schneckenburger
Shining Darkness glowingly reviewed by fRoots editor Ian Anderson: “’Americana’ seems to be pretty much off the boil and resting, worn as a flag of convenience by too many chancers and exhausted by fringe rockers whose connection to the roots was as thin as their originality. The Crooked Jades are something else though. Grounded in tradition, old-time string band music and mountain blues but with open horizons that take them, subtly, to other parts of the planet, they have a haunting spookiness, an organic pulse, and most importantly a clear vision… Instrumentally they’re truly inspiring, getting original textures out of conventional stringband instruments and mixing them with (in this context) oddities like bass ukulele, harmonium, mbira, cello and Vietnamese jaw harp and bau zither. Vocally, they have that lonesome white blues sound which has its ancestry in Dock Boggs and the Carters but again they take it somewhere else…a consistently startling and addictive album.”