Gillian Welch

I kind of assumed after Everything Is Free and Wrecking Ball that she'd just never bother recording for public release again.

New album due next year according to metacritic; no release date as yet.

I saw her play summer before last and she was superb. They are a uniquely mesmerising live act. That song "Throw Me A Rope" has been hanging around at least since near the time of Soul Journey. Hope it's on any new album that comes out.

^It should be; it's been a staple of the live set for a while. In an NPR interview at Newport this year she said she & Dave were in the midst of recording a new album. Said it doesn't take them all that long to record them, just to start recording.

And YOW! that initial post! Well done, Marcello. Though I would argue vociferously with many of your transcriptions ("every word seen in the data"?) and quibble with your interpretations, you capture the SPIRIT of the record extremely well. It's an album that calls for interpretation, explication, exegesis. Repeated listening as a whole artifact, complete immersion, fear and trembling. It has some kind of special power that she'll probably never tap again (and the timing of the album was accidentally impeccable; it had a weight that seemed to capture the whole circa-911 American underground zeitgeist perfectly). For a long, long time I've wanted to write a fairly lengthy piece about this album but have felt - have been - unequal to it. Yours will do instead. Kudos.

have just been blown away by this album, having not played it in years. there's not one wasted moment. great writing upthread too.

Six years without a record. Weird.

don't think she's toured in a very long time either

Doesn't she guest on a track on the Dark Was The Night compilation?

Maybe she is gone off the net because of me.

Man, I loved Soul Journey at the time, I might dig it out again this evening.

I think she plays at least a few shows every year -- and there's something called the David Rawlings Machine that seems to be playing out from time to time. Not sure what that is, though. Covers? But yeah, the fact that she's made what -- 4 records in 15 years does not suggest someone too concerned with a standard timetable. But anyone who's made a record as flat out brilliant as Revelator has earned her laziness!

http://atruersound.blogspot.com/2007/07/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-revival.html

what happened to that duets album that was meant to come out last year

well, this is out ... Basically a Gillian Welch/David Rawlings record, I gather, with Rawlings fronting the band ...
http://kylepetersen.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/daveraw_cover_select-353x.jpg
Haven't heard it though!

it's okay

yeah, it's sort of amazing it took them 6 years to release what is essentially a stop-gap album ...!

I wish she'd come back. I have strong nostalgic ties to Hell Among The Yearlings and it's always been my go-to album of hers. It came along at one of those times in life when no matter what it was coming along it's going to mean something to you forever. It was kinda funny to seek out other albums that I recognized as being equally good, more or less, and to realize that the sentimental pull I've attributed to the music for so long had a lot more to do with time and place, with me and my own life, than anything else. Which of course isn't to sell her short...

Too many years of the wrong GW amirite

I like that Rawlings Band album better and better the more I listen to it. But it ain't a patch on the GW-fronted stuff. You just can't fuck with her voice, whereas DR is a much better backup singer than frontman.

that marcello review is unreadable.

And you realise that this astonishing piece of music is beyond even a reverie, not the reverie of the dying Charles Foster Kane trying to make a personal sense of his life, but the imagined, implanted reverie we recognise from Blade Runner. It is the American equivalent of Tricky's "Aftermath." A replicant trying to learn and assimilate an alien cultural vocabulary. Bowie's imagined Sinatra gabble at the end of "Low." An alien trying to find its mother, its womb.

actually part of it is very readable, for roffles.

Yeah, that review is pretty much horseshit.

I've seen GW and DR MANY times - at Merlefest, with the bluegrass faithful who absolutely LOVE them, at Bonnaroo, with the hippies, who also LOVE them, and out in LA at the Largo, a venue that, among other things, serves as their home away from home. She is FAR from humorless, is an excellent musician, and any aping or pantomime that may come across to those looking for more "authentic" country is her adoption of a certain musical vocabulary, and not her attempt to come across as real or the genuine article.

ALL the musicians I've ever seen her play with - Emmy Lou Harris, Tony Rice, Alison Kraus, etc. - they all have a great affection for these two, and obv. enjoy the opportunity to play with them.

That's all I'll ever need to know.

saw Dave Rawling Machine in London last night; was incredible and kicking myself for not checking out the album after i heard some reviews comparing it unfavourably to the GW albums, as all the stuff sounded great. they did a few Gillian songs too, PLUS OH MY FUCKING GOD special guest for nearly the whole set JOHN PAUL JONES on mandolin. They covered Cortez The Killer and Queen Jane Approximately. With JOHN PAUL JONES. possibly gig of the year. Old Crow Medicine Show headlined afterwards and we left after 20 minutes. Pretty good stuff but not comparable to what came before.

yeah, i pity anyone who has to follow those guys, whether it's gillian welch straight up or dave rawlings machine. still need to get that album, though. any news on an actual gillian welch record?

www.nodepression.com/profiles/blogs/psst-gillian-welchs-new-the
looks like there is finally a new record coming out! better be good, right?

http://cache.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2010/11/drudge-siren2.gif

http://www.twentyfourbit.com/post/5556572784/gillian-welch-to-release-fifth-lp-in-june

It’s been eight years since Gillian Welch’s last solo album came out, but the wait for a follow-up to 2003’s Soul Journey will soon be over: NPR reports that Welch’s fifth LP, The Harrow and the Harvest, will arrive on June 28 via her own label, Acony Records.

Though she hasn’t released much music under her own name in nearly a decade, Welch has been steadily touring and collaborating with a number of artists in the meantime, more recently recording in the studio and performing on Conan with the Decemberists for the first single off their latest album, The King is Dead. Welch and longtime musical partner/producer David Rawlings have also been touring in support of both his debut LP and Conor Oberst’s 2010 Concert for Equality rally.

Details are scarce at the moment, but in the meantime, you can catch her on tour with Buffalo Springfield

Very exciting. Hoping for something akin to "Revelator"..

SWEEEEEEEEET

The affiliation with Oberst is troubling but I'm crossing my fingers....

personally find the affiliation with the decemberists more worrying since they've actually been performing with them (also i prefer oberst (in the "better a punch the balls than a kick in the balls" way)).

as long as neither is on the album it's not a problem. and if they are, who knows, maybe it will be ok.

welch/rawlings affiliate with a lot of people. gotta do something while you're putting off making a record of your own for eight years.

otm

Welch/Rawlings are so tasteful and their instincts so sound that I think they could make the most of a Peaches cameo, let alone someone actually sympathetic like Oberst or the Decemberists. I wouldn't sweat it.

otm!
weirdly, heard "my morphine" on the radio (college station) while driving around yesterday. dj seemed to be doing some kind of "country drug song" set. ("Sam Stone" preceded it). What a crazy, slow, beautiful song.

xp i dunno, pretty much every time they collaborate with someone it's much worse than them on their own. at least part of that is making bad choices about who to collaborate with.

having said that a lot of the collaboration things seemed a little half baked, and this sounds more like a real album.

also there doesn't seem to be any suggestion there are any collaborations on this album!

was "soul journey" any good? that completely passed me by.

yeah it was good. kind of had to a little bit of a letdown after the amazing revelator, but some great stuff. kind of think they'll be living up to revelator for the rest of their careers, but who knows?

the songwriting wasn't as strong as revelator imo, but i did like the full band sound

er
http://www.gillianwelch.com/images/thth500.png

Acony Records is proud to announce that on June 28, 2011 they will release The Harrow & The Harvest, the new album by Gillian Welch, featuring ten new songs recorded at her own Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, Tennessee and produced by David Rawlings.

On May 30, 2011, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings will embark on a North American tour supporting The Harrow & The Harvest that will continue through the summer and into the fall. The acclaimed duet will visit over seventy cities in their most extensive tour in over a decade.

At least they have a sense of humor about what they do.

haha, yeah.

Welch/Rawlings are so tasteful

I agree but isn't this also why some people don't like 'em? I think Chuck Eddy on some other thread might have said how he finds them too mannered or something.

yeah, i mean, i can see that -- they're definitely calculated in some ways, but it works for me.

The calculation can be a put-off - I saw Welch/Rawlings live a year or so ago, and I was a bit bugged by the unwavering setlist, right down to the covers - but, I mean, they did go to the Berklee School of Music. It's formalist, to a degree, but like, I dunno, Nickel Creek, they do seem to have a subtle post-modern approach to what they do that counters charges of outright affectation.

right, yeah, i think i *like* the calculation involved, like a lot of their stuff seems really precisely tailored for effect. while still managing to be emotionally involving.

that record cover is amazing

you can hear a new song 26 minutes into this

They're still alive! Newport Folk Festival, July 27th (sold out already)

http://gillianwelch.com/tour/

! Moar dates please