The cello of Carmel native Rushad Eggleston drives the cool Americana of Crooked Still.

By the time the body count reached four, I was in love. It wasn’t so much the constant threat of violence, or the immanence of redemption peeking through Aoife O’Donovan’s dry-ice cool vocals. Rather, it’s the whole musical concept surrounding her on Shaken By A Low Sound, the second CD by the Boston-based neo-old time combo Crooked Still.

With its mix of murder ballads, Delta blues, hymns, folk songs and the odd original tune, the string band reinvents classic Americana material with intricate arrangements, hard-driving rhythms and beautiful, hauntingly dispassionate vocals.

In addition to O’Donovan, Crooked Still, which performs at the Big Sur River Inn on Sunday afternoon, features Greg Liszt on banjo, Corey DiMario on acoustic bass and Rushad Eggleston on cello. Eggleston, of course, is a local boy made very good. A graduate of Carmel High School, he started playing violin at 3 and cello at 9. In 1999, he became the first string player to win a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music as a recipient of the prestigious James L. Lyons Scholarship, an honor named after the founder of the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Even before finishing his studies, Eggleston scored a Grammy nomination for his work on the eponymous debut release of Fiddlers 4 on Compass Records. As the young gun on the project, he more than holds his own amongst the veteran violinists Bruce Molsky, Michael Doucet and Darol Anger, a virtual fiddle hall of fame. Anger was so impressed that he recruited Eggleston for his band the American Fiddle Ensemble, and featured his cello work extensively on the 2004 Compass album Republic of Strings.

“He was playing incredible bluegrass cello, old time cello and jazz cello, basically doing everything on the cello that I do on the fiddle,” Anger said in a 2004 interview. “He has incredible flair and a great grasp of musical structure. He’s mastered how to play bass and drums on the cello simultaneously, and he’s a fantastic soloist.”

In many ways, Crooked Still is built around Eggleston’s remarkable cello work, though that’s not to diminish his masterly bandmates. Each arrangement is a marvel of interaction that requires the musicians to switch roles mid-flight. With no drummer on board, the ensemble shares rhythmic duties, so that every player is responsible for the groove.

“It’s kind of like baseball more than anything else,” Eggleston told the Weekly last year.

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The band came together in 2001, when all four musicians were living in Boston. While studying at Berklee, Eggleston started jamming regularly with Liszt, who was developing an innovative four-finger banjo style while completing a doctorate in biology at MIT. (Liszt recently completed an extensive European and US tour with Bruce Springsteen as part of the Boss’s acclaimed Seeger Sessions Band.)

Meanwhile, Aoife O’Donovan (whose first name is pronounced “EEF-uh”) had bonded with her New England Conservatory classmate Corey DiMario. After meeting at a party and quickly determining their musical interests overlapped in many areas, the foursome started honing a group sound based on a shared love of bluegrass and old time music.

Before long, Crooked Still started gaining a cult following. Performing regularly at the folk club Passim and Cambridge’s Cantab Lounge, the quartet attracted a conspicuously young audience with their bandstand charisma and instrumental bravado (the fact that they’re all easy on the eyes didn’t hurt either).

The press took notice. The Boston Herald reported: “Crooked Still manages to amp up its ancient American songs in unplugged yet groove-crazed ways. Melody lines and rhythms crossbreed and shift focus. An expressive sense of a dark, wild life ensues. Unlike most bluegrass, the bravura playing deepens the mood.”

While I take exception to the last line—the best bluegrass creates an exquisite tension with the contrast between instrumental ebullience and rough, high lonesome vocals—the reviewer captures the band’s delirious energy. What’s fascinating about Crooked Still is that O’Donovan turns the bluegrass sensibility inside out. Rather than pained resignation, her clear, unaffected voice seems to step back from the dire scenes she describes.

When O’Donovan sings about Little Sadie getting shot down in the song of the same name, or about rising up from the earth in glory in “Ain’t No Grave,” she sounds more like a keen-eyed observer than an implicated participant. She also performs widely as a member of the jazz/bluegrass band Wayfaring Strangers and is featured on their latest release, This Train.

Crooked Still introduced the combination of instrumental virtuosity and incisive vocals on Hop High in 2004. A series of triumphant festival appearances and the well-received debut recording introduced the band to a national audience and attracted the attention of the contemporary folk music label Signature Sound. Working with Lee Townsend, the Berkeley-based producer whose credits include CDs by artists such as Charlie Hunter, Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Loudon Wainwright III, and Kelly Joe Phelps, Crooked Still released Shaken By A Low Sound in August, confirming its status as a brilliant addition to the new acoustic music scene.  

CROOKED STILL plays at 12:30pm Sunday at the Big Sur River Inn, Highway 1 at Pheneger Creek. No cover. 667-2700 or bigsuriverinn.com.