Linnea Sablosky (with Zubin Hensler), Luca Diadul
A Man Full Of Trouble
127 Spruce St.
Philadelphia
Jan. 14, 2026
Are you familiar with Aerial roots? I wasn’t until recently. Recently, while traveling in the south, a friend invited me to go kayaking deep in a South Carolina swamp; there were all these little stump-looking things protruding everywhere in the ground that we had to watch out for while walking around, and, asking what their deal was, he told me they’re cypress knees – basically, parts of the root structure of the cypress trees, but poking up and out into the open air. From what I’ve gathered from the bare minimum of research, nobody is conclusively sure why they do this, though there’s reasonable-sounding theories, like that they provide further stability in the wet swampy ground (“structural buttressed support and stabilization,” if we’re getting wiki with it).
I’m bringing this up because something about these tapers came to mind while witnessing the performance of Linnea Sablosky and Zubin Hensler last night, at the wonderfully-named, tiny Old City bar A Man Full of Trouble. The night’s music was organized by Hensler, a Philadelphia-based musician, artist, and jack-of-all-trades, in what I hope will be an ongoing, at-least-semi-regular series. Hensler recently mixed and mastered a forthcoming album from Sablosky, the LA-based singer and songwriter in town between tour dates, and this was their very first performance together, though from their undeniable chemistry you’d reasonably think they’ve been clocking mad hours. It is downright bewildering when two musicians are playing music this slow and tricky, with such big spaces between the notes, and so in the pocket together. That’s where I think the swamp imagery sprung up, just like those knees: there was a musical depth that was only partially subterranean, plenty of it right out in the open. My imagination ran wild with blank spaces to fill. (If it sounds like I loved it, I totally did.)
Though instrumentally sparse – just the two of them, switching between electric keys, percussion, acoustic guitar, and bass, with Sablosky singing always – the pulse they conjured was hard-hitting as it gets. Sablosky, a CalArts graduate with a BFA in World Music Performance, is a curious, emphatic musician, studied in Balkan singing and West African rhythms since early childhood and, it was abundantly clear, fluent in many musical styles and idioms. Structurally these were pieces with intricate rhythms in occasionally odd meters, but rather than feeling it in your feet, you’d get it in your chest: slow tempos, dense, ringing harmony, and incredibly agile and crafty vocal phrasing above it. I thought of Ellen Arkbro’s album I Get Along Without You Very Well (an all-time favorite), then I’d think of Appalachian folk singers like Almenda Riddle and Sacred Harp singers like Tim Eriksen. Some of the material they sang was indeed traditionally rooted in the Sacred Harp songbook, yet powerfully modernized. In contrast to other contemporaries influenced by or adapting this type of folksong material, Sablosky employed drone creatively, and to myriad emotional ends, both consonantly and dissonantly: often the drones would agitate the melodies when resulting in uncomfortably-close intervals. There was immense freedom in rhythm and phrasing without sacrificing a dominant central pulse (rock-solid tempo-as-drone, if you like). And what a voice. Sablosky sings without affect, in a narrow dynamic range, letting the beauty of the words and the melodies speak (volumes) for themselves. The second-to-last song they performed was the highlight for me – a captivating, hypnotic, transfixing song, its clipped words repeated like penance, and so much left unsaid:
It brings the iceberg theory to mind, but let’s call it the cypress knee theory here: this is music that grows, reaching out. Can’t wait to see who Hensler brings to A Man Full of Trouble next.
