Emerging from varied genre backgrounds, Boston-formed quartet Corner House’s unique strength is their desire to learn from one another—not only in musical skill and style, but in life experience—such that every challenge overcome by one band member becomes part of the group’s shared musical and personal DNA. On their new full-length debut, How Beautiful It’s Been, the band—songwriter and guitarist Ethan Hawkins, Scottish fiddle player Louise Bichan, bluegrass mandolinist Ethan Setiawan, and cellist Casey Murray—reveals the sublime result of that growth mindset, with a singular sound that incorporates old time, Scottish, progressive bluegrass, and folk music, with the help of their collective mentor and the album’s producer, Scottish harp virtuoso Maeve Gilchrist. Americana Highways premiered Corner House’s first single from How Beautiful It’s Been, “South of the City.” Leaning well toward the upbeat end of the break-up song spectrum, this waltzing number showcases not only Hawkins’s songwriting but the band’s stellar, accurate-yet-soulful musicianship as well. Fans can hear “South of the City” now at this link. (Corner House, 2022)

Corner House’s first full-length offering features five lyrical songs and four instrumentals, which serve as soundscape meditations between each lyrical offering. Several of the instrumentals, such as “Two Rights Make a Chicken,” showcase the Celtic influence in the band, with gorgeous cello and fiddle melodies calling Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas recordings to mind. In this context, however, they are also accompanied by rhythmic and arpeggiated mandolin and guitar, emerging into improvised solos before returning to the melodic backbone of the tune. Although Hawkins is the sole lyric writer, the subject matter of the group’s songs is a reflection of their collective experience. One such song is “Angel Falls,” one of the album’s standout tracks which Hawkins wrote after a long discussion with Murray about her experiences with religion as a queer person. “I am human / I have choices / To love who I want to love / I have a right.”

In many ways, Corner House is the band we all wish we could be a part of. Mutually inspired, learning from one another, and open to any and all ideas, the group is a beautiful representation of their generation; not only tolerating but embracing diversity in every aspect of their music making. If we listen closely enough, we may be able to learn just as much from them as they have from one another.

Catch Corner House on tour:
June 11 – Pamet Harbor Club – Truro, MA
June 23 – House concert – Baltimore, MD
June 24 – Red Wing Roots Music Festival – Mt. Solon, VA
June 26 – Stone Room Concerts – Arlington, VA

Originally hailing from Boston, MA, Corner House takes their name from the place where the four young band members found a musical family in one another—their shared home in Brighton, as students at Berklee College of Music. Made up of songwriter and guitarist Ethan Hawkins, Scottish fiddle player Louise Bichan, cellist Casey Murray, and bluegrass mandolinist Ethan Setiawan, Corner House are students of a wide variety of musical traditions. For their debut full-length record, they enlisted harp virtuoso Maeve Gilchrist, a past mentor to all four band members, to produce.