In my last review, I posited that Emily Barker’s
band, the Red Clay Halo, is named after a song by Gillian Welch. And then my
next random album selection turns out to…Gillian Welch! Stupendous synchronicity,
Batman!
Disc 1283 is… Hell Among the Yearlings
Artist:
Gillian Welch
Year of Release: 1998
What’s up with the
Cover?
This is a pretty common folk cover in that it just looks like some random
selection from the artists family photo album. “Oh, yes – this is that time I
was standing out beside the house. The wind was really cold that day, and you
can see my hair is blown clear out of place – scandalous!” One look at this cover
and you might expect some happy pastorals of family life…but you’d be wrong.
How I Came to Know
It: After years of flirting
with the idea, a couple of years ago I decided to take a journey through
Gillian Welch’s back catalogue. I liked what I heard, and I liked it a lot.
How It Stacks Up: I have four Gillian Welch albums and they are
all amazing. When I reviewed “Time (the Revelator) I thought I had heard the pinnacle
of her work because to beat that record out you’d need a five star album.
Enter, “Hell Among the Yearlings” to do just that, taking over first place with
a perfect score.
Ratings: 5 stars
I thought “Time (the Revelator)” was a quiet
and stripped-down record, but “Hell Among the Yearlings” takes that concept to
a whole new level. For this reason it takes a few listens to fully attune to
its greatness. That’s not a problem, because every time I got to the last song
all I wanted to do was start over at Track One.
That track is “Caleb Meyer” and it sets
the tone for “Hell Among the Yearlings” from the start. The song tells the
story of an attempted rape of a woman by her neighbor, forestalled when her
prayers are answered:
“I cried my God I am your child
Send your angels down
Then feeling with
My finger tips
The bottle neck I found
I drew that glass
Across his neck
Fine as any blade
Then I felt his blood
Pour fast and hot
Around me where I laid”
The imagery is intense and disturbing, and the
insistent double guitar of Welch and husband and co-writer David Rawling adds
additional intensity with a visceral beat-forward jangle that sets your nerves
on fire and cements you emotionally in the scene.
The record is full of similar tales of darkness
and woe, and characters down on their luck and struggling with poverty, drug
abuse or - such as in the case of “The Devil Had a Hold of Me” - just a
litany of bad decision making. Each song immerses you in the mind of a character
so completely that in the 3-5 minute running time you feel like you’ve lived a
lifetime.
The romance an addict feels for his fix is
explored in languorous pain on “My Morphine” and on “Whiskey Girl”
you get to see the problem magnified when two people feed off each other’s weakness:
“Nowhere man
And the whiskey girl
They loaded up for
A weekend in the underworld.”
On “Miner’s Refrain” you live the dread
that an East Tennessee miner feels every time they go into the ground and hope
they’ll come back alive at the end of the day.
The record is also a master class in bluegrass,
and whether Welch and Rawling choose two guitars or a guitar and banjo, they
blend their individual brilliance into a single collection of intricate notes,
played in perfect time. Welch’s voice floats on top of this matrix of sound, filling
the song with equal portions of sweetness and hurt. The duo even throw in some
Buddy Holly style rock and roll licks on “Honey Now” just to show they
can do that too.
Many bluegrass records include old classics
reimagined alongside the artist’s original compositions. I was sure that would
be the case with “Hell Among the Yearlings” with songs like “Caleb Meyer,”
“Miner’s Refrain” and many others having a timeless beauty that you can
imagine ringing out in nineteenth or early twentieth century America.
It is only because the songs are so perfectly
constructed that you’re sure they must be classics, but every song is a
Welch/Rawlings original composition. It is easy to understand how Gillian Welch
is a north star for many modern bluegrass and folk artists. These songs will be
inspiring future players hundreds of years from now.
The record ends with “Winter’s Come and
Gone,” a jaunty up-tempo track that on the face of it is a man down on his
luck welcoming the spring after a hard winter, acknowledging that while “Five
cold nickels/Ain’t gonna see me through” at least it isn’t cold at night
any more.
That’s about as inspiring as “Hell Among the
Yearlings” gets, but considering the record started with slitting some rapist’s
throat with the Broken Bottle of God, it’s a definite improvement. The real inspiration
is in the magnificent singing, songwriting and playing featured on this record.
This is as good as it gets on all three counts.
Best tracks: All tracks
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