Album Review: Dave Rawlings Machine – A Friend of a Friend
Posted on | November 10, 2009 | No Comments
1. When I first heard that Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch were switching places in their informal arrangement usually billed as “Gillian Welch”, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would it be like the Esquires, the rare electric incarnation of the duo? Would Gillian sing at all? Now that I’ve heard A Friend of a Friend, I feel foolish for expecting Dave and Gillian to reinvent the wheel — what they have going is impossible to duplicate. Not that there aren’t new ideas on this record — a string section and a group of horns make an appearance, to great effect. On A Friend of a Friend, Rawlings and Welch show that they can let Dave’s fresh tenor lead the way and harness the frenetic energy of his solos and retain the same musical integrity that has defined their career.
2. “Ruby”, which opens the record, spins a Rapunzel-type tale over a vintage sounding string section topped off by the pair’s aching harmonies (aided by Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor). Secor’s fiddle slyly creeps in with the orchestral strings, as the song reaches an peak with Benmont Tench’s organ swells. The spectral atmosphere quickly ends as the band scoots into Dave’s take on “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)”, which he co-wrote with Ryan Adams. The song forgoes Adams’ thin wild mercury sound for a more traditional sound that keys off the tension between Rawlings and Welch’s voices. When they hit the bridge, there are few better sounds in music than the major seventh harmony (which they also contributed to Adams’ version on Heartbreaker).
3. Rawlings contributes a stripped down take on “I Hear Them All”, which makes the song more of a dream than the marching reality of the version recorded by Old Crow Medicine Show. A mashup of Conor Oberst’s “Method Acting” and Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” follows, and they just sound good together. Young’s tale of imperialism and Oberst’s celebration of musical escapism don’t have a lot in common, but Rawlings makes that not matter so much, with the first (and only) extended guitar break on the record showing his raw mastery of the instrument.
4. The gentle “Sweet Tooth” and the rollicking “It’s Too Easy” celebrate the simpler things in life, while “How’s About You” deals with current economic uncertainties in a typical homespun fashion, as Rawlings sings “Used to have a dollar, gonna have a dime someday.” A bit of New Orleans creeps in with the horns on “Monkey and the Engineer”, which tells the childlike story about a stolen locomotive, and the album finishes with the dreamlike “Bells of Harlem”, which I went into detail about last week.
5. As Dave and Gillian have evolved their traditional sound to the primitive, near-rock heard on Welch’s last solo record Soul Journey, they have stuck to the music that they like — traditional songs that emphasize their powerful, raw approach to singing and guitar. A Friend of a Friend shuffles the deck, but doesn’t stop the force of their work. These songs aren’t fleeting, trendy, or subject to the outside world. Rather, they take time to create and, as this album proves, are worth the wait.
Dave Rawlings Machine – Ruby (live)
Dave Rawlings Machine – “Bells of Harlem”
Posted on | November 2, 2009 | 3 Comments
1. David Rawlings and Gillian Welch make what is generally considered throwback music. From Gillian’s first record Revival, the duo have been making music that doesn’t depend on trends or the passage of time — an Appalachian folk mixture that draws strength from the songs themselves, not from elaborate production or experimental sounds. It has now been six years since their last sighting, and the new record A Friend Of a Friend could not be more welcome. Resurfacing as the Dave Rawlings Machine, Welch and her partner haven’t changed much except lead vocal duties. The music still points back to older forms of music, though on “Bells of Harlem” Rawlings adjusts his lens to harness a string-laden, mid-60’s sound that perfectly complements his and Welch’s high-register harmonies.
2. “Bells of Harlem” opens with lyrics about waking up, and not being able to “sleep for dreaming.” The words match the music’s dreamy waltz, lilting with the grace of “Just Like a Woman” as Rawlings expresses the relief of feeling at home. When Welch joins him with to drawl out “This is the dawn/ the break of day”, the two capture the youthful excitement of a long-anticipated day. Rawlings’ plucky Epiphone Olympic guitar stands out over the strings, as the song is in no rush to move forward. His narrator tells of moving down the street, the “crowd breathing faster” after walking what must have been “a hundred blocks”. He sums up the short memory of a child, realizing that “tears of the past” are no more, caught up in the palpable excitement as he hears the long-awaited bells. The impact of the sound is explained by quoting “Ain’t No More Cane” and declaring that “they couldn’t stop the freedom train”, drawing a historical framework around the events and adding gravity to what was a simple child’s dream.
3. Sonically, this song could easily be a Louis Armstrong tune — the vibraphone and stirring string section give it a lift even as the song fades away into nothing. Rawlings said in press for this record that while Gillian’s voice is more powerful without a lot of instrumentation, he had to find new musical settings when taking over lead vocals. His experimentation is wildly successful, as he reinterprets his own sound into a beautiful, nostalgic blend of country soul. The warm, analog sound of this song is the result of an organic process — no corners were cut in this recording. The unmistakable sound of real strings and voices on two-inch tape wrap this song like a blanket. Rawlings and Welch’s commitment to taking time with their music might make their fans restless in the interim, but “Bells of Harlem” allows listeners to share in the harvest.
Dave Rawlings Machine – Bells of Harlem (live)