This album could be yours!

Roothog Radio is practically the last place on the internet to have not reviewed Gillian Welch’s new album, The Harvest & The Harrow. Miss Welch has finally fed the beast, and the country ethers are abuzz. It’s been talked about everywhere – I even saw the album reviewed on the back of somebody’s set list the other night. Other blogs that have reviewed the album have raved about it so I’ll just point you here, and here if you want affirmation of your musical tastes. If however you feel that Gillian Welch is overrated and those fools on Bedford Avenue don’t know music from their older brother’s Columbia record club membership, then this review is for you!

[Enter Harvest, chick with glasses who eats organic and likes to read; parents hippies; better angel.]

I genuinely wanted to use this album to complain about how popular Gillian Welch is, and explain how this occludes many other worthy female artists. Unfortunately, fate and better angels (me) intervene, and I must tell you that Miss Welch has made a lovely album, full of poetry and ripe with Mr. Rawlings wonderful musicianship. The album is thoughtful, deliberate, and clean. Best of all, it is slow. And the world needs to slow down.

Pickin’ it deep at the Hardly Strictly

Miss Welch is not one to experiment with style which perhaps makes her seem a little affected. Whatever, she writes well. A friend of mine said listening to the album made her wonder if Gillian Welch had gotten into drugs. [Raspy laughter heard in the background….] When I listened to the album I thought the music sounded quite happy. The songs have whimsical turns of rhyme and melody and lyrics are enchanted like pebbles on a wind swept beach. Let’s hope that Miss Welch continues to popularize the banjo among women, and write those adroit, but ever so slightly academic country songs. As for Mr. Rawlings, he is as worthy as ever of jealousy, for his musicianship, of course.

[Enter Harrow, an old woman with a heavy wooden rake….worse angel, obviously]

You don’t put your kids to bed to this.

I do not, on the other hand, wish to suggest that Gillian Welch is without peer. Parents in co-ops may not be putting their kids to bed to albums by Sarah White or Carrie Rodriguez, but these other gals have something to say. I’ll tell you, when I was growing up, the minister in church would give sermons full of grandiose words, but he would deliberately obscure any kind of message. The words had a pretty ring, but not exactly of the truth. A preacher can’t be encouraging people to go eatin’ on the apple, I suppose. Similarly, Alison Krauss has been a hugely successful singer but her vocals are entirely without edge and are thus unmoored from the messiness of real life. Unfortunately for some of us, life has edges, and we need singers to say it. Take Eleni Mandell’s Country For True Lovers – now that record was slow. Sarah White’s brother really did get into drugs; “It’s nothing I haven’t done before,” she wrote about it. You want dark and wind swept – how about Jenny Sheinman?    ….. I could go on and on……

Anyway, that’s the Harrow and the Harvest for ya.