What could Gillian Welch possibly do in the wake of her 2001 release, Time (The Revelator), an epic concept album that explored big themes like the interplay of American history and popular music, and the troubled passing of cultural icons like the Titanic, Casey Jones, John Henry, Abraham Lincoln and Elvis Presley?
What she’s done is make a beautiful album that narrows its focus while at the same time expanding its sonic scope. On Soul Journey, Welch’s fourth album, she has released both her first solo songs, accompanied only by herself on guitar, and her first songs with a full band (although some tracks on her debut, Revival, had electric guitar and other accompaniment).
It’s also another concept album of sorts, an intimate record of the many journeys the soul can take in one life, or even in one day.
Though Soul Journey is more focused and intimate, it’s not unambitious, and certainly not narrow-minded. In the very first refrain of the first track, “Look at Miss Ohio,” Welch manages to reference both Hank Williams and St. Augustine:
Oh me oh my-oh, look at Miss Ohio
Runnin’ around with the ragtop down
She says I wanna do right but not right now…
From the very opening bar, Welch fans know they’re hearing something different. “Miss Ohio” starts right off with an electric bass guitar setting the rhythm, and sweet dobro flourishes commenting on the lyrics. The bass is courtesy of Son Volt’s Jim Boquist, the dobro’s from sideman extraordinaire Greg Leisz. Elsewhere, there’s fiddle from Ketch Secor, of the up-and-coming string band Old Crow Medicine Show, and Mark Ambrose on additional guitars. Welch and her partner and producer David Rawlings play everything else, including drums, organ and harmonica.
On three songs – the traditional “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor” and “I Had a Real Good Mother and Father,” and Welch’s “One Little Song” – Welch sings solo with just her own guitar for backing. These three songs have a live, kitchen-table quality to them; no vocal processing, no dubs, just Welch and her guitar and the microphone, into which she sings her honeyed drawl so closely at times that you catch every nuance of breath and lip and tongue. She sings like someone with nothing to prove, just the supreme confidence of a performer who’s at the top of her game and loves what she’s doing.
At the other end of the spectrum are full-band performances like “Wayside/Back in Time,” which opens with an upward run on the soulful B-3 organ, sounding like nothing so much as one of the best songs never released by The Band in its heyday; and “Lowlands,” a stripped-down guitar-bass-drum ballad that sounds like an outtake from Neil Young’s Harvest sessions. Welch’s drumming, in fact, sounds so much like Stray Gator Kenny Buttrey’s that I had to check the credits.
The album peaks on the final track, “Wrecking Ball,” which launches right off with electric guitars and fiddle and builds to a blaring alt-rock climax. It’s a ragged tale of “a little deadhead’s” mini-epic jaunt through the American dream and beyond, ending in the big California quake of 1989.
But every song here is about a personal journey of some sort, from the dark despairing mental trip back in time of “Wayside”; and from despair to hope in the delightful “One Little Song.” There’s the country-blues exhortation to “get on board” the slow train journey through life’s swamps of “One Monkey,” and the hopeful trip to heaven of “Mother and Father”: “What good is my journey if it miss out on eternity?” There’s the bastard’s journey through shame to self-acceptance in “No One Knows My Name,” and the journey to love’s enlightenment of “I Made a Lovers Prayer,” in which the singer makes that leap from happily-ever-after to just hoping for an amicable parting.
Though it’s probably not destined to be one of my “desert-island” discs, Soul Journey is an enjoyable wayside on the ever more promising journey of Gillian Welch’s musical career. Whatever style she adopts, from lonesome mountain music to gold-hearted roots rock, Welch continues to amaze with her musical authenticity and emotional honesty. Whither she goeth, I will follow.
(Acony, 2003)
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