Aural Fixations

GILLIAN WELCH
Soul Journey
(Acony)
So what is it about the American roots music thing? Even before the whole O Brother, Where Are Thou phenomenon, there was a groundswell of appreciation for the indigenous 20th century music of America's past. (Let's be clear about what we mean when we talk about American roots music: we're talking about pre-rock & roll styles that are not jazz or classical, i.e. blues, country & western, folk, bluegrass, gospel and their various ancestors and spinoffs.) There are those that might declare that rock & roll obliterated any real interest in roots music, but that argument doesn't hold much water. After all, the original 50s rock & rollers—Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, among others (and let's not get into arguments about folks like Hank Williams, Roy Brown, Harmonica Frank, Louis Jordan, Ike Turner and other, pre-1954 luminaries having "invented" rock & roll, all right?—one musicological issue at a time)—were using the blues, gospel and country as the building blocks for the new sound in the first place, so rock was never that far away from its hillbilly roots. Besides, by the mid-60s, rock & roll artists were revisiting those roots and growing new branches from them—Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Taj Mahal started a whole new genre of the ever-evolving corpus of rock that we now call roots rock. While roots music has enjoyed massive success at some times more than others (cf. CCR's reign over the singles charts in the mid-60s and early 70s, the back-to-basics country movement of the 80s, led by Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis, and the O Brother thing in the early 2000s), it's never gone away, merely slipped underground sometimes, plying its craft to cultists and true believers until the general public once again regains interest.

One of the reasons roots music has survived is because of many of its adherents' fanatical devotion to authenticity. Needless to say, authenticity is a loaded word; it implies a rigid set of rules to be followed, a canon not to be deviated from. It also implies that any kind of mucking about with the structure, whether it's a deliberate nose-tweaking or a genuine desire to innovate and push the music forward, is often greeted with disdain or even outright hostility. Purists argue that any variance on the formula is somehow tainted, blackened, and, worst of all, dishonest. It's not real, say these folks, because it's not like the way it was in the past. As if all one needed to be musically honest was a set of the right tools and a copy of the Alan Lomax archives.

The best roots music artists, however, respect the past while looking toward the future. While it's always good to keep the old-fashioned ways alive, it's not so good to use them as replacements for current methods, if those methods are sound. By the same token, just because a musician wasn't born into a tradition doesn't mean he or she can't continue it, even add to it. A good artist uses whatever means of emotional expression that seems true to her to create, whether it's a banjo, a drum machine or a combination of the two. To do any less would be far more dishonest than any deviation from the party line.

When singer/songwriter Gillian Welch first appeared in 1996 with her debut album Revival, she was accused of carpetbagging. Though her music was and is deeply steeped in the traditions of the mountain music of the early 20th century—particularly the Stanley Brothers, who she's constantly maintained are her main inspirations—she was not born to this music. The California native grew up in a successful middle class family and was educated at the Berklee College of Music in Boston; this automatically branded her a musical colonialist in the eyes of purists. She even had the audacity to admit to a fondness for alternative rock pioneers the Pixies. Sacrilege, they said. How can she pretend to be a roots musician when she doesn't have the right roots? (more)

Album reviews of new music by:

The Chains

The Chains boast two things far too many of their Nuggets-loving brethren don't: a surprisingly soulful singer and consistently good songs. (more)

eels

E hasn't made such a clean, uncomplicated album since his days as a solo artist. (more)

Gravitron

Gravitron's debut The Dawning of the Finite Moment of Now was supposedly recorded while under the influence of the theories of the German Expressionist artist collective Die Brücke. (more)

Ed Harcourt

He sounds relaxed and confident, moving easily from celebratory pop and electronic noir to sardonic spookiness and confessional balladry. (more)

Lincoln Conspiracy

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first: Prefab Sprout, Ben Folds Five, the Beach Boys. (more)

The Lovetones

The Lovetones present Be What You Want, a debut collection of tightly constructed, blatantly anthemic set-pieces that sound like arena rock singalongs without the cheesy aftertaste. (more)

Mushroom with Gary Floyd

One day spacey progressive fusion ensemble Mushroom, had a brainstorm: record an album of 60s and 70s covers with Gary Floyd, beargod frontman of bluesy punk rock troops Black Kali Ma and Sister Double Happiness. (more)

And enjoy the refreshed sounds of Electric Light Orchestra.