sparkless's Full Review: Soul Journey * by Gillian Welch
Writing about music is always a slightly odd exercise (dancing about architecture, as the cliche goes), so I dont feel any hesitation about beginning these words on neo-Appalachian songstress Gillian Welchs most recent, Soul Journey, by writing about writing (indeed, depending on how you read, by writing about writing about writing...), thus:
In his rather splendid The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera does a wonderful riff on Anna Karenina, and in particular on the seemingly somewhat stylised way in which trains function as the starting and ending points of the grand love affair. Kundera reckons that its reasonable to say that Tolstoys device is rather overly fictional and literary, but only if you concede that this is how we create our own lives - we look for themes and imbue them with significance, constructing our lives according to principles of beauty (at least in ideal terms) and aesthetic form.
Now, I get the sense that Kunderas cultural palette is more high than popular, but I think he would have approved of - or at least recognised - the way in which albums and songs can come to fill particular functions in the patterns of our lives. For me, one such pattern is that each summer seems to have one particular album which, in retrospect, seems tove been everywhere in the air over that time. Im pretty sure that 2000/01 was Powderfingers Odyssey Number Five; from 01/02, it was Natalie Merchants Tigerlily; in 02/03 it was Aimee Manns Bachelor No 2; in 03/04 it was Wilcos Summerteeth - and in 04/05, Gillian Welchs Soul Journey.
Indeed, the most striking thing about Soul Journey is its summeriness. At this stage in her career, Welch has, it seems, largely moved beyond the relatively unadorned bluegrassy and trad-folk flavour of her earlier recordings, now mining a perhaps richer and certainly broader seam of rootsy americana, in terms of both instrumental palette and general ethos - I fancy that Grams old term cosmic american music aint a mile away from whats going on here.
The sound isnt as old-timey as on any of Welchs previous, uniformly great albums, 1996s Revival, 1998s Hell Among The Yearlings and 2001s Time (The Revelator) but its equally warm and dusty-feeling - and equally great. Theres an end-of-day languor to it all - a sense of the interstices between sunshine and shadow, of hazy still afternoons flowing into breeze-touched evenings, of drift and ebb and flow, and of the necessary relationship between transience and permanency. Music that exists in the intersections of country, folk and more popular stylings today is, of its nature, in a sense suspended between past and present - informed by and tied to what has come before it (not least the suffering and hardship out of which mountain music was born) - and Welch seems to have achieved some kind of contingently perfect synthesis out of this ongoing process of retrieval and renewal...its somehow out of time.
What does this mean on the ground of Soul Journey, as it were? Well, it means acoustic guitar, dobro, fiddle, unobtrusive drums, and sometimes bass and (I think) even organ, and all melded into something which feels old and new all at once. And then, of course, theres Welchs wonderful yawn (in the best possible way) of a voice. A lot of the warmth of this music comes directly from that voice - down to earth and forthright, and yet somehow expressive and delicate, too. A voice which is crystalline, not in a perfect Alison Krauss kind of way (something which I say without meaning any disparagement of Krausss lovely and amazing voice!), but instead has echoes of history and life woven in with its clarity...if that latters voice is silvery, then perhaps Welchs is golden.
Most of the songs are original compositions, albeit steeped in the traditions on which Welch draws, though two traditional numbers - Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor and I Had A Real Good Mother And Father - are given the treatment and done proud. Theres a pleasing simplicity to the arrangements; in fact, this simplicity characterises all of the numbers on Soul Journey. These are songs that can be enjoyed even by those who usually never listen to country or folk or any of that jazz - its not that they transcend as such, but more that they seem to uncover, or penetrate beneath, these kinds of generic distinctions to something deeper and more real. Call it authentic, perhaps, if you bear in mind that authenticity isnt about submission to constraining dogmas or obsolete prescriptions and has rather more to do with the realisation of a kind of fundamental truth.
Opener Look At Miss Ohio sets the tone, with its subtly layered, slowly building (but never quite resolving) yearn; it and fellow album bookend Wrecking Ball are clear highlights even amidst the consistent quality of the whole. Wrecking Ball in particular really is something else; preceded by the wistful prettiness of One Little Song and I Made A Lovers Prayer, it picks the pace up a bit, and fills out those implied spaces to create a fuller sound than anywhere previously on the album, swinging Soul Journey home on the back of a scything fiddle, prominent guitars, Welchs voice, and a gorgeous melody...it brings my heart into my throat nearly every time. In a way, it - and the album as a whole - does, as Welch sings, show us colours wed never seen, but its the kind of showing that brings with it the realisation that, after all, those colours were always already there.
Well, here in Australia, spring is flowing by and summer comes ever nearer, and for me, this summer will be another personal Rubicon, for once its over, Ill have finally passed from the tranquil waters of university into whatever the real world may hold for me, and Im beginning to wonder how everything will turn out. In relation to music, anyway, my past summer soundtracks have only really been identifiable retrospectively, and this is apt as far as Soul Journey goes, for the album is, in at least one important sense, all about looking both forwards and back while finding a space in the present moment - a suitable companion as our journeys continue ever unfolding before and within us.
But it is, laughs Gillian Welch. This really is the sunniest record I ve ever made! Now, sunny isn t usually the first word that comes up in a discuss...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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