HIGH BIAS -- lead review

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?

As it happens, quite easily. She doesn't need to have mountain soil stuck between her toes to make the kind of music she wants to make. Did anyone throw darts at John Fogerty for CCR's swampy sound, even though he was born and raised in the Bay Area? Of course not, because he didn't need to have the roots to grow new trees. Likewise, Welch has this music deep down in her soul; she may not have been raised with it, but she understands it, its honesty, its power, its very soul. And because she was largely self-taught in the ways of roots music, having never been given a copy of the rulebook, she's been free to start her own tradition with a superlative set of albums like Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings. Her previous album Time (The Revelator) broke major ground for her as an artist, incorporating an almost psychedelic sense of experimentation, culminating in a 15-minute dreamscape called "I Dream a Highway" that managed to invoke Dylan and romantic poetry while still sounding grounded in the roots music tradition. That takes skill, courage and an abiding love for the old ways without being afraid of tampering with them.

With her fourth album Soul Journey, Welch has done it again. With her guitarist/co-writer/partner David Rawlings, she's created a work that revels in its authenticity while still being comfortably contemporary. While her last couple of records have stuck to a two voices/two acoustic guitars format, Soul Journey finds the palette expanded considerably. "Wayside/Back in Time" rides a slow, steady groove of bass, drums and organ (all played by Welch and Rawlings), constructing its lyrics out of phrases from old folk and country tunes in a nice contrast between the old and the (semi)new. The dark, bluesy "One Monkey," the tentatively hopeful "Lowlands" and the sprightly "Look at Miss Ohio" follow the same pattern, using a minimalist rhythm section to drive the old-fashioned melodies. The lyrics continue to use old-time phrases, but in a dreamlike, imagistic way, as if Welch is trying to convey impossible-to-describe feelings in prosaic language, a compelling artistic choice. The album-closing "Wrecking Ball" is the climax of not only the album but also Welch's current direction, its fleshed-out, mostly improvisational majesty reaching the same heights as comparable tracks by greats like the Band or Neil Young. It's a high point in a career that rarely dips below excellence in the first place.

Purists may balk at Welch's cool, loose folk rock, but there are songs on this record for them as well. "No One Knows My Name," "I Made a Lovers Prayer" and "One Little Song" go back to the simple guitar-and-voice style for which she's best known; as with many of her best tunes, these sound like they could have written 75 years ago while still coming across as relevant to modern times. She also dips into the traditional songbook for the first time on record, with strong solo interpretations of "Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor" and the obscure "I Had a Real Good Mother and Father." Hewing close to tradition, but hardly constricted by it, on these tracks Welch sounds soulful and contemporary.

The approach taken by Welch and Rawlings on Soul Journey is hardly a new one—after all, this is what started the whole rock & roll revolution in the first place—but duo makes it sound fresh, as if they'd decided to recapture that 50s feeling of constructing something new out of the old building blocks. The best roots musicians follow the twin paths of respect and innovation, which leads to music that sounds old and new all at once; Welch and Rawlings are undeniably masters at this. There's a perfect word for what Gillian Welch accomplishes on Soul Journey: timelessness. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, David Olney