Infinite Partials' debut album End of Begin is an evolution of extant sound rising from Appalachia, classical concert halls, folk, world, and even the tiniest measure of ginger ale acoustic pop. It is a warmly alluring and exceptionally well-produced album that lights upon selections from any person's musical memoirs. Maybe Andrew Noble's mandolin chews up the musical jargon dictionary. Perhaps Andy Strietelmeier and his violin slice through expectations. Jesse Jones' djembe and Andrew Davis' cello certainly rebuff the advances of critical tarts. You can practically feel the sunlight streaming through the windows and the soft reverberations flow through and fill the room; as a producer, Stephen Orsak should be proud.

Yet while the music rises above one's expectations, it is the Frenchman-wave of Grant Hudson's literally abstract songwriting and musical direction that remind me of the moonflower, Ipomoea alba. "Fear of Death," starting off with a melancholy viola and then opening into a world of probing cello and romantic percussion becomes both richer and more compelling at each listening. "When I held you in my arms, the fear of death released my memory…/ these questions that I ask myself are meaningless / my own denial is the only thing keeping me away / … / but I can't abide by all of the rules I've put on myself."

No matter how many times I hear the album, each time I am rewarded by beholding something different. Such is the grace one finds when listening to music that is not afraid to play hide-and-seek in the dark. "Watch yer Back," a bounding number that I've seen people salsa to, asks, in the midst of a gorgeously constructed dueling viola and violin: "the shackles of my imagined past grow out of me like grapevine / son, why don't you watch your back? / this machine that I have invested my faith in is sucking me dry."

Speaking to the technical aspects I will simply say this: if you can find an imperfect note from the sextet among the eleven tracks during those 61 minutes, I will give you $10 and let you call me Queequeg for an entire evening. Like all good love affairs, a grounding in classical training when combined with a primal need to explore, fuses a multitude of elements and sentiments into a spectacularly integrated sound species.

The quieter side of the album is no less imaginative. "Trying to Transcend" lingers over and incorporates religion, existentialism, and LSD. Ultimately, there is great promise in Infinite Partials and their music. Currently they stand alone in the type of music they create—defying traditional genre classifications. It seems shallow to speak strictly of harmonies, melodies, and themes in the case of End of Begin; it seems more appropriate to reflect on the colors and creations we cobble together when left to dig though our histories. But that is where they will likely shine, continuing to create new stained glass from older fractured materials.

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Thanks, Ms. Nicol. We needed that.

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