Review of new CDs from Gillian Welch, Dawes and The Rosebuds

 

 

Gillian Welch

“The Harrow and the Harvest”

Acony

O Sister, Where art thou?

That’s what Gillian Welch fans have been wondering for eight years, since the release of “Soul Journey,” a fine but relatively unsatisfying follow-up to her masterpiece, “Time (The Revelator).”

She hasn’t been getting hipper, that’s for sure. Welch’s new songs still sound like they’re tumbling from an arch-top wireless on the moonlit porch of an Appalachian mountain shack.

Teamed yet again with her live-in collaborator David Rawlings, the songs are spare, dark and crisply played. Besides the handclaps, harmonica and banjo on songs like “Six White Horses”  and “The Way it Will Be” there isn’t much adornment, nothing to distract from the seamless blending of the pair’s pure voices.

Buried in the best of the new songs are references to their ancient cousins. The melody of “Silver Dagger” borrows a bit from “You Are My Sunshine” and the six-minute “Tennessee” may be a feminine, but equally bleak, take on the hillbilly chestnut “Moonshiner.”

When the pace does pick up, it’s just barely with songs like the drug overdose cautionary tale “The Way it Goes” and the bruising “Scarlet Town.”

“On the day I came to town/ You promised I’d be your bride/ But you left me here to rot/ Like holly on a mountainside,” she sings in the latter.

Dawes

“Nothing is Wrong”

ATO

In the two years since their debut, the L.A.-based Dawes have so thoroughly perfected their jangly, 1970s California rock that it will surprise no one to hear Jackson Browne himself warbling through the splendid “Fire Away.”

 Other sun-baked, post-Hippie giants also get their due, with nods to early Neil Young, The Eagles, Tom Petty and even lighter fare like Poco and Firefall. Their lyrics, however, are clearly drawn from their new life on the road since hitting big with their impressive “North Hills” in 2009.

 “These days my friends don’t seem to know me without a suitcase in my hand,” frontman Taylor Goldsmith sings in the album’s very first line.

The melancholy “My Way Back Home” builds to a nice guitar showdown, while the harder driving “How Far We’ve Come” also draws from the loneliness and futility of falling in love on the road.   

“If I Wanted Someone” could have been the B-side to Young’s “Down By the River” and the sweet ballad “Moon on the Water” has a nice Byrds feels to it.

In the end, nothing on “Nothing Is Wrong” plows any new musical territory. But, so what. The songs are good ones and they whip up plenty of nostalgia for the early days of FM summer radio.

 

The Rosebuds

“Loud Planes Fly Low”

Merge Records

With the divorce of founding Rosebuds Kelly Crisp and Ivan Howard, you’d think the North Carolina band’s new album would join the cannon of great break-up albums.

But, there’s no “Blood on the Tracks” here.

The partnership continues, at least musically, and that’s a good thing. It’s the interplay of their voices, the sharing of their domestic intimacies, the quarrels, the occasional dullness, that has made their songs so compelling.



Much of that remains. While their first album was called, “The Rosebuds Make Out,” this could be “The Rosebuds Move On (and Stay Friends).”

 “I’m the last one to understand,” Crisp sings in the driving “Come Visit Me.” “I want to feel something way out here.”

In “Go Ahead,” Howard imagines a romantic do-over in a magical forest where they can run free all day and sleep in the branches on a pile of Crisp’s dresses. And, while songs like “Limitless Arms” and “Bird of Paradise” are hopeful, there’s still a dark weight of regret pressing down on them.

For even long-time fans, listening all the way to the closer, “Worthwhile,” takes some fortitude. But, as always, these are good songs, each of them catchy in their own perverse way.