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Yeah, Gillian Welch is a pop-folk-revivalist. Get over it.Personally, I find her much less patronizing and obnoxious than most revivalists, but even if she hadn't *adopted* the neo-Appalachian thing, I do like a lot of her songwriting, and I like her musical arrangements, which aren't overproduced but also aren't trying too hard to be "twangy."
If longevity is a measure of an album's appeal, then the fact that this is still one of my favorites, SEVEN years after I purchased it surely says something. "Time" is a beautiful, poetic, and soothing album. "I Want To Sing That Rock & Roll," is perhaps the happiest of the bunch.the rest have mournful (but not depressing) lyrics and sound. If you like Alison Krauss or Emmy Lou Harris, Gillian Welch is a sure-fire hit.
This album is just.transcendent. It's a new kind of music. A pure, resigned sadness emanates from somewhere inside most of these haunting songs; never gratuitous, but so connected to real life in its truth-telling.
Truly enough, Gillian Welch's other albums feature what might be labeled a greater "variety" of song styles, and they deserve repeated listening as well, but "Time (the Revelator)" stands alone. The vocal harmonies and string playing are innovative, always serving the mood. I'm still profoundly affected by it after nearly five years' owning the disc.
Other selections leave one with a sense of the death of the real USA. I love it, and dearly, precisely because of its unique, hypnotic tone and pacing. Altcountry it isn't, and this is key; Welch and her facile, idiosyncratic guitarist David Rawlings succeed in the creation of an economical yet expansive acoustic sound-world, at once spare and sophisticated, and very beautiful.
I don't need to ferret out every arcane reference in the lyrics, or to "get the message," I simply adore this stuff. Let it happen to you.
Most of which I couldn't find after being away 20 years, but. I first heard this music on a tiny boom box on John Hartford's Porch just after they had recorded some of it in an all night session in Studio B. I was curled up in a hard wooden chair, and very hung over from a night of drinking in my old haunts. Gillian & David brought me home. Ted The Fiddler
In a lifetime of listening to music, in the wake of thousands and thousands of albums sat with, there are perhaps 50 that are so self-assured, so complete, and so beautifully executed that there is nothing to say other than. "don't let another day pass without listening to this." Finding records like this is the whole reason I listen to music in the first place.Sunset on a decrepit back porch with a glass of whiskey.
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