My review was delayed this week as I was on the road. Taking full advantage, I made sure this next record was loaded and ready for listening as I navigated airports, hotels and the general “hurry up and wait” that is business travel.
Disc 1643 is…Rolling Golden Holy
Artist: Bonny Light Horseman
Year of Release: 2022
What’s up with the Cover? Is it just me, or does this cover look board? Get it? Get it?
Man, I crack myself up.
How I Came To Know It: Bonny Light Horseman’s debut album (reviewed at Disc 1351) was my second favourite album of 2020 so I snapped the sequel up as soon as it came out.
How It Stacks Up: Bonny Light Horseman have two albums and as you can tell from the previous category, their debut is hard to beat. “Rolling Golden Holy” was not up to the task and falls to a distant (but still respectable) second place.
Rating: 3 stars but almost 4
Like Bonny Light Horseman’s first album, “Rolling Golden Holy” is a chill laid-back collection of folk tunes, performed by a ‘super group’ trio. Super group by indie folk standards, anyway.
The record’s tempo could be called a mosey if it were more country in its flavour. Instead, it is more of a summer stroll down an overgrown road. Maybe an amble, even. Whatever the case, the songs aren’t in any hurry to get anywhere.
I primarily found this lack of urgency charming and agreeable. On “Gone By Fall” you have a soothing guitar picking pattern, and lyrics that capture love at is most accepting and ephemeral:
“Our
love is fleeting, our love's flying away
It could last forever or could last a day
Out in the meadow and the shadows tall
“It
might last the summer
Then be gone by fall”
Eric D. Johnson’s vocals on this song are stellar, a plaintive birdsong – the kind you hear a few trees away, made more sublime by all the air in between. Juxtaposed against this is Anais Mitchell’s thick, rich and rounded singing, equally beautiful. When they come together for a duet, as on “Exile” the effect is a soothing sway, like lying in a hammock in a gentle summer breeze.
“Someone to Weep Over Me” is the album’s best; is a tear-stained letter of a tune about a young man of no social consequence (he describes himself as being from “a long line of nobodies”). Our hero finds love in the song, but you can tell from the tone he’s not going to live through the conflict; it’s enough for him to be remembered, even if only fleetingly and by a single girl. The song captures the flair for character, and sparse and well-placed imagery that builds a whole world with a few phrases.
Mitchell’s touching vocals are well delivered on “Comrade Sweetheart” but the tune is a bit too balanced and lacks forward momentum. This is too bad because it wastes some of the record’s best musicianship in the process. Also, I found the use of ‘comrade’ a clunky term of endearment within the context of the song.
On songs like “Sweetbread” you can tell they want to jam out, gumboots at the farmer’s market style, but it doesn’t work and the song gets very busy without ever getting where it is going. On other songs, the band seems to fall in love with a phrase and to repeat it over and over again. The intent is to evoke a mood, but even a mood piece needs dynamics – musical or lyrical – to hold the listener’s attention.
The album ends on a high point, with “Cold Rain and Snow”. This song wouldn’t be much to write home about, except that the electric guitar work from the third member of our trio - Josh Kaufman – is just so damned brilliant. It isn’t fast or intricate, but the riff has a rich tone that could stretch for days. Kaufman’s vocals are overshadowed by his bandmates on the record as a whole, but ere the end he gets this well-deserved moment in the sunlight of the sublime.
My quibbles about “Rolling Golden Holy” are minor, and it’s biggest failing is that it can’t match the 5-star brilliance of the band’s debut. That kind of 5-star magic doesn’t come around often. On its own merits, this is a solid record and a worthy sophomore effort.
Best tracks: Exile, California, Gone by Fall, Someone to Weep for Me, Cold Rain and Snow
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