It has been a hard Easter long weekend, as Sheila and I have had to deal with Inigo backsliding badly in his health, and needing another tap to drain fluid out of his chest. I hold out very little hope for him, and barring a miracle, this will be his last week with us. It sucks mightily.
So we’ve spent our weekend having a few cries, a few drinks and four games of Arkham Horror as we try to keep our minds occupied with something enjoyable.
Disc 387 is…Endless Seasons
Year of Release: 1995
What’s Up With The Cover?: A portrait of the band, shot to look antique. This cover isn’t anything special, but as folk music album art goes, it is pretty good.
How I Came To Know It: As I noted when I reviewed Grey Dusk of Eve way back at Disc 219, I’ve been a fan of the Rankin Family since I first heard “Fare The Well Love” in 1990. “Endless Seasons” is their fourth studio album, and I bought it when it came out.
How It Stacks Up: I have six Rankin Family albums (including one EP). “Endless Seasons” is a good record, but I’d put it 4th out of those six.
Rating: 3 stars
I had intended to start this review noting the growth of pop and country influences on “Endless Seasons,” but listening again on the headphones as I write this, I think what I was hearing was better production. You see, lovers of folk music have an incredibly high tolerance for weak production values, as long as the music is good. They are rivaled in this only by lovers of punk music, who take it one step further and actually enjoy bad production. The production on “Endless Seasons” is amazing. So good, I almost forgot I was listening to a folk album.
This is folk music though, and good folk music at that, with the Rankin’s usual tasteful mix of traditional tunes, modern originals and at least one song sung in Gaelic.
Gaelic is a beautiful language, and I love listening to it sung, even when I don’t know what they’re saying. The offering on “Endless Seasons” is the very pretty “Oganaich An Or-fhuilt Bhuidhe/Am Braighe.” Say that three times fast. In English it means “Youth Whose Hair Is Golden Yellow/The Braes of Margaree.”
The Rankin sisters (Cookie, Raylene and Heather) have a beautiful, pure tone to their voices and in “Oganaich, etc.” you can hear every syllable. And of course, the mind – eternally trying to form order out of chaos – unhelpfully fills in English words whenever it thinks it hears them. Sheila and I always find this a humorous byproduct of listening to the Rankins sing Gaelic. So on this listen, among other things I heard:
“It clicks and gleams but boy you lean
You break your spleen your dyin’
But take machines and marry me
So come and clean up early.
The actual translation from Gaelic of that section comes out:
“The hills and dales most beautiful to us
Are the hills and dales of the Braes (Margarees)
Where we often sang
sweet melodies in the friendly company we liked best.”
So while I’m sure we can all agree that I was pretty close, the song is not in fact about human-robot love or cybernetic implants. It is a traditional song about a woman praising a guy for being a very good hunter, and an all-around brawny, attractive fellow. Like I said, I was pretty close.
Whatever it is about, it is a beautifully re-imagined traditional song, and the sisters sing it like angels. Listening, it is easy to remember why when I first listened to the Rankin family in the early nineties, my favourites featured the female voices of the band. Years later, I still love them, but I have a new appreciation for Jimmy Rankin.
Also a gifted singer, Jimmy’s voice has a bit more roughness in it that makes it the perfect foil against his sisters. On many songs, such as “Blue Eyed Suzie” each of the four of them take a turn at a verse, and Jimmy’s always manages to ground the song a little bit before Cookie, Raylene or Heather fly you back up to the clouds. It is a great combination, and they use it perfectly (did I mention the production is excellent?)
The final song on the album is my favourite, a Jimmy Rankin composition, sung by him alone called “Your Boat’s Lost At Sea,” a heartbreaking tale of someone hoping that their true love makes it back against all odds:
“Fire on the water
And smoke in the sky
I’ll leave the lamp burning
In case you drop by.”
I like the decision to use ‘drop by’ as well, re-interprets the song and see it as a more mundane collapse of the relationship, where one person is still hoping to salvage something that is beyond recovery. Or to paraphrase the Matrix, "the secret is - there is no boat."
The album is heartfelt and honest, but stumbles in places with an over-earnestness. This is particularly noticeable on “Natives” a song about the terrible history of the residential school system in Canada. It is an important topic, but the song tries to cover too much ground and misses its emotional target. It would benefit from the Steve Earle system of creating a single character around which to tell the story, rather than trying to write a chapter of history into a poem.
The title track, “Endless Seasons” is another fine Jimmy Rankin break-up song but the decision is taken to have the sisters sing it. They can sing the phone book and make it sound good, but their voices are a bit too pretty, and I found myself wishing Jimmy had sung this one instead. Hey, I said the production decisions were amazing – not perfect.
All told, I almost gave this album four stars, but lyrically there are a couple of awkward spots, and I have that ‘hard marker’ reputation to hold up, so I kept my enthusiasm dampened to a very high three, and left some room for their other albums to surpass it.
No comments:
Post a Comment