Gillian Welch

i think revelator is the only record where she figured out how to do something wholly her own. still shows all her obvious debts and influences, and still indulges in some po-faced po'-folks stuff, but the musical and lyrical reference points are farther flung and more mysterious than on the other albums. i think it's really a great record. the songs stand up individually but also cohere into something greater, mystical, apocalyptic (and/or rapturous, if there's a difference).

on another note, anyone heard tim and mollie o'brien's cover of "wichita"? that's one of my favorite non-revelator gil songs, but she hasn't released a version of it herself as far as i know. the o'briens version is great.

Yeah, I totally agree about Revelator, and Soul Journey was a bit of a letdown in that regard - I mean not that she went backward or anything, but the album didn't add up to much for me.

I also really like the Nowhere Man/Whiskey Girl song for similar reasons (does something her own, loses the po-faced schtick)

All the talk of Red Clay upthread reminded me of this story

I guess taste is taste, but I can't help but think that people who use the "NPR music" zing are more interested in stylistic than qualitative distinctions.

I mean i remember that xhucx kept calling her "schoolmarm folk," and I can hardly accuse him of being deaf to qualitative distinctions, but I don't hear schoolmarm folk in Gillian Welch at all.

well there is something a little antiseptic about her, although in a somewhat complicated way (as marcello's first post does a good job of illuminating: "too impeccable to be real; not enough dirt on her boots, not enough creases in his suit. But then that's the point.")

i understand complaints about her humorlessness, even though i think she's funny sometimes, and as far as neo-authenticity goes she can be a big offender. but that's one reason i think revelator is her best record, because it kind of moved beyond a lot of that. a few songs aside (including "red clay halo," which i like a lot anyway because it's a good tune), it's not particularly mannered or self-consciously rootsy.

"npr music" though is just as dumb as any other dumb tag. bob dylan is npr music too. so is ella fitzgerald. and?

I always thought "Red Clay Halo" was a cover - it sounds like some kind of traditional song that's filtered down over the years into the martyr complex of mainstream country (and a lot of rural, or wannabe rural, white people - them big city elites are making fun of us!).

guess I missed the secret sign that "npr music" was supposed to be trenchant criticism. ok, you've convinced me that she's crap. will stop listening to her and all other npr crap immediately.

Can we agree on a definition - "NPR Rock" ??

ROFFLE:

somewhere between crowded house and wilco.

-- stockholm cindy (winter version) (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 20 January 2006 05:12 (1 year ago) Link
...there lies obsession.

-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 January 2006 05:32 (1 year ago) Link

This thread reminds me of what Tom Smucker (quoted by Xgau) said about Woodstock:
"I left one thing out of my Woodstock article. I left out how boring it was."

No album in four years though and no current tours.

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 5:09 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark

What is up with that?

weirder is that there kind of were tours, right? like a bunch of american shows a year ago, maybe. she's got really good new songs, too.

I am watching this right now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074qnh/BBC_Four_Sessions_Gillian_Welch/

(which that Youtube is from)

yeah funny that it's been so long since her last record! i interviewed her in 2005, i think, and at the time she hinted that a new record was imminent. guess not! she did say that she liked having her own label because it allowed her to go by her own timeline. have heard one amazing new song "the way it will be" that they play live. though calling it new at this point is silly, i think I heard them do it in 2003 ...

saw her in brooklyn last year and she was grrr8

website lists a bunch of albums that she and david rawlings have "appeared" on, no tour dates

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....

Co-sign the love for the Boots series. It’s an interesting compare / contrast with Miranda Lambert’s Marfa Tapes. But also love Rawlings guitar work…

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/gillian-welch-time-the-revelator-1203615/

It's highs are not as high as Time (The Revelator), but Harrow and the Harvest has been like a slow burn for the past 12 years or whatever since it came out, just slowly but perpetually rising in my esteem and my heart. I go back and forth on whether I can say it's my favorite.

Anyway, I was just listening to "Hard Times" and searching to see if "we're supping on tears, we're supping on wine" was their own construction. It is, I think, but I was pleased to see that it is an allusion to the original "Hard Times" (Come Again No More), which features the line

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor

Nice little Easter egg, made me smile.

Also, as incredible as the Boots comps are and as gorgeous as their covers can be, I would really love to hear some new original music from these folks!

Harrow & Harvest was just rereleased on vinyl after selling for $$ on discogs for a while.

Listened to Soul Journey for the first time last night and I liked it more than expected. The cover and title aren’t very compelling, but it’s pretty good.

Also, as incredible as the Boots comps are and as gorgeous as their covers can be, I would really love to hear some new original music from these folks!

Don't sleep on Poor David's Almanack from a few years back. It's credited to Rawlings, but there are several co-writes with Welch and she sings and plays on it as well.

Thanks for the endorsement. There are a few songs I love dearly from his first couple but as full albums they are a clear cut below the ones in her name. Can't remember if I ever gave that new(er) one a listen though.

Xpost Hard Times. There’s a great fan-made video set against clips of Paper Moon.

And it’s worth hearing Chris Thile’s super fast version on mandolin. I prefer Gillian’s version but ymmv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qiija5dBBIw

Last night's spangles and yesterday's pearls
Are the bright morning stars of the barroom girls

OTM

(maaaan)Anybody jonesing for Gillian and Dave should check out Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert:
https://kanegellert.bandcamp.com/album/the-flowers-that-bloom-in-spring

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3960809645_16.jpg

This is superb, thank you dow. Love the art, too.

You're welcome! I like the art on the Bandcamp page too. This is something I just came across on there, still need to check the two previous duet albs they've posted. Every time I listen, it hits me a little harder, in that-low key way.

What the folk https://store.aconyrecords.com/products/the-harrow-the-harvest-reel-to-reel/

“Oh cool, I’ll pay $75 for thaWHAAAAAAAAAAA

You underrate the value of the deluxe slipcase and custom tape boxes.

All I wanted was Revelator on vinyl.

Red Clay Halo is just the best

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

http://gillianwelch.com/tour/

! Moar dates please