Gillian Welch

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

really awesome synth sound

rawlings can really spit

no, kidding, sounds like all the other lps but in a good way

the new album has some really beautiful songs - tennessee and the way the whole thing ends in particular.

god this woman is dull dull dull

I find her unmoving as well, which surprised me given the raves and the fact that I like many other similar artists. I can't put my finger on what's missing...

Love the first half of the new one - not so sure about the rest.

I've seen her - or them - live twice, and both times they were really mesmerising. I can understand the impulse that lies behind one finding her dull, but I can't excuse it. ;-) "Time (The Revelator)" and "Soul Journey" are both really good albums.

I used to dismiss her, but it was actually Dave Rawlings' album that brought me around.

I'd say she/they are incomparably wonderful compared to the vast majority of comparable artists in their (supposed) field. which would probably be 'alt country' / 'americana' of course

ive listened to time the revelator so much over these past months. its kindof difficult to talk about it without getting into cliches about haunting reveries or something. im interested in the closing song though, i dream a highway. its part of the tradition of folk epics about the conflation of large themes with small details. i like how it uses that form, the folk song with the endless verses and makes it feel so stretched out and distended. this combined with the road imagery makes me think of like krautrock and kraftwerk but instead of the gleaming autobahns of the future its the dusty roads out of the past. idk how relevant or interesting this is to anybody its just something i noticed and seems kindof pertinent to the ways their formalisms work a kindof postmodern filtering of tradition, i mean you could almost not notice it at all.

i mentioned liking GW a little after i heard her, and the girl i was talking to kinda took a moment and then said, ah, right; adult contemporary.

xp at jamie btw

streaming on npr. sounds very nice. http://www.npr.org/2011/06/26/137346722/first-listen-gillian-welch-the-harrow-and-the-harvest

weird that there are three "the way" songs here .

i'm loving this album.

what I said upthread about the 1st half dominating still holds, except that "Hard Times" might be the best thing on it. Mind you I have an irrational annoyance towards the old-timey lyrical bent to some tunes ("Down Along the Dixie Line," "The Way the Whole Thing Ends").

Worth the wait.

Great show at the Warfield in SF tonight. The new tunes sounded fab & slotted right in with the old. Gillian danced!

Rawlings is the most original guitar player of his generation

Alec Wilkinson on the New Yorker blog

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/gillian-welch-the-harrow-and-the-harvest.html#ixzz1RaPygURc

Some weird hyperbole in that piece. "No guitarist at the moment is more immediately recognizable." I mean, I love Rawlings and think he's an incredible guitarist doing neat things in a tradition-based medium. I could listen to an album of just him playing guitar. But at the same time, he's beholden enough to the style of said medium that I don't hear him as nearly as distinctive as the author. He's a virtuoso, like Chris Thile, but because he plays in service of such a specific style - and because he's so tasteful to boot - he does a good job disappearing into the music.

New album is nice, by the way, but almost perverse in that it followed such a long wait, seeing as it's not terribly substantial or substantive (in the general sense; those words read more negative than I'd intend).

"Dark Turn of Mind" is hot/scary