Lindsey Buckingham News

One measure of an artist's merit is the ability to take a song originated elsewhere and give it a unique and identifiable stamp. It's been a hallmark of such artists as Ray Charles, Willie Nelson and Eric Clapton, and Nickel Creek demonstrated a similar knack during its show Saturday at the Wiltern.

Over the course of two hours, the band incorporated such disparate titles as Radiohead's quiet "(Nice Dream)," Randy Newman's sardonic "Short People," the children's folk song "The Fox," the Band's bohemian "The Weight" and Britney Spears' frenetic pop piece "Toxic," making all of them fit rather easily into Nickel Creek's singular framework.

The group's sound is rooted in bluegrass, with tight, lonesome harmonies and an acoustic setup that eschews the brash banjo in favor of the genre's more delicate instruments. But to call Nickel Creek a bluegrass band does it a disservice. The group employed a sort of jam-band philosophy, taking extended instrumental swings in most of the material but coloring many of the pieces with odd rhythmic shifts more characteristic of jazz or even classical idioms.

In addition, Nickel Creek borrowed from numerous genres to build its set. "Anthony," from the group's current "Why Should the Fire Die?" album, employed an Al Jolson-style melody; "House of Tom Bombadil" threaded Celtic influences; and "House Carpenter" added a medieval quality.

The entire band, girded by upright bass player Mark Schatz, showed admirable dexterity as instrumentalists, but -- as he has since the group's national debut five years ago -- mandolinist Chris Thile proved a magnetic focal point. Often hunched over his mandolin, tripping and staggering about the stage in a physical reflection of the emotions he wrung from the instrument, Thile vacillated between Bela Fleck-like fluidity and Lindsey Buckingham-style intensity. And he often changed his style of playing midsong -- sometimes with great subtlety, sometimes with startling abruptness, but always with a sense of what the song needed.

With their microphones enhancing the sibilant portions of their vocal work, the three-part harmonies of Thile, fiddler Sara Watkins and guitarist Sean Watkins took on a serenely haunting texture, appropriate since the songs often explored the mysterious aspects of the human condition.

A good deal of the material, from the opening "When in Rome" to the picturesque "The Lighthouse's Tale," infused intelligent vocabulary while raising ethereal questions or recounting difficult circumstances, including loneliness and suicide. But while those topics shadowed the proceedings, they hardly dampened them. The band members, whose ages range from 23-28, countered the darkness with an energetic approach to their instruments and with occasional nuggets of positive philosophy, including a line from "This Side" that stood out particularly: "Only the curious have something to find."

By casting a wide net across musical styles with a youthful curiosity about the world, Nickel Creek has developed its own unique place, and it's a place that's genuinely worth finding.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter