CD Odyssey Disc 1643: Bonny Light Horseman

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

The Best Albums of 2020

 Welcome back! I’ve been on vacation and have had limited opportunities to fulfill music listening within the parameters of Rule #4 (n.b. – I usually do this on my way to and from the office, so with no commute, reviews tend to drop off).

Never fear, intrepid reader! I am here to provide a timely salve to the interweb’s insatiable need for content. Not just content, either, but the second most popular thing people do on the internet after cat videos – read lists!

I listened to all or part of over 150 albums released in 2020, and bought 70 of them. Of all of these albums, I narrowed the field to a top 20. Over the course of the last week or so, I’ve played each of these 20 albums one more time to get them back in my head. I did so with the participation and assistance of my lovely wife Sheila, who helped me with her opinion of each, and more generally called bullshit on my more offside choices - apparently I have a hidden weakness for very specific guitar strumming patterns…who knew?

Anyway, without further ado, here are my Top 10 albums and – because choices are hard – five more albums good enough to achieve an “honourable mention” that fell just short of the final list. Depending on your tastes, these could be interchangeable for you in your quest to hear something good.

10. Lucinda Williams – Good Souls, Better Angels

     - Lucinda is consistently good, but with Good Souls, Better Angels she delivers her finest work in over a decade.

9. Sarah Siskind – Modern Appalachia
     - Sweet and tasteful exploration of Appalachian music from every facet you can imagine.

8. Lydia Loveless – Daughter
     -  Loveless’ seventh record is her usual mix of regret and heartbreak wrapped within her best collection of songs yet.

7. HMLTD – West of Eden
     - A mix of psychobilly, post-punk and New Wave, this record is a ton of apocalyptic fun. Also the record that most impressed Sheila.

6. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
     - It was a hell of a thing to match the brilliance of 2017 “Stranger in the Alps”, but Bridgers manages it.

5. HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III
     - Twice before HAIM has almost snared me with their talent for writing top-tier folk-adjacent pop. On their third attempt I swallowed hook, line, and sinker alike, as the saying goes.

4. Jaime Wyatt – Neon Cross
     - Like Bridgers, Wyatt also ascends once more to the heights of a 2017 debut. This is country music with edge and honesty like you’ll rarely hear. Also the record that least impressed Sheila.

3. Run the Jewels – RTJ4
     - Is this Run the Jewels’ best record ever? It is good enough to beg the question.

2. Bonnie Light Horseman – Self-Titled (Reviewed at Disc 1351)
     - Sometimes music is so pure and perfect that everything else just melts away. This is one of the best folk records I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of folk records.

1. Katie Pruitt – Expectations (Reviewed at Disc 1361)
     - One young woman’s courageous journey out of the shadows of self-doubt and small-town Georgia to find her place in the world. A fabulous collection of folk-rock gems that leaves me verklempt every time.

Honourable Mention: Taylor Swift – Folklore; Sarah Jarosz – World on the Ground; Clem Snide – Forever Just Beyond; THICK – 5 Years Behind; Dehd – Flower of Devotion

CD Odyssey Disc 1351: Bonny Light Horseman

This next entry is my first review of an album released in 2020. In a year that is likely to be remembered mostly for a global pandemic, it’s a good time to point out that 2020 was also a year when something of great beauty got made. Here it is.

Disc 1351 is…Self-Titled

Artist: Bonny Light Horseman

Year of Release: 2020

What’s up with the Cover? Long-time readers of the CD Odyssey will know I’m fond of the Giant Head Cover, but here we have gone one step further with…the Giant Horse Head Cover. I’m sure that Bonny Light Horseman considered other options but someone must have made them an offer they couldn’t refuse and so…horse head.

How I Came to Know It: I read a review of the album and was intrigued, so checked it out.

How It Stacks Up: This is Bonny Light Horseman’s only album so far, so it can’t really stack up with anything.

Ratings: 5 stars

Maybe of late you are finding yourself yearning for a simpler time, or just need something sonically beautiful to soothe your troubled soul. If so, this is the record for you.

Bonny Light Horseman is another supergroup in the same way that “I’m With Her” is a supergroup. By that I mean that a) they are a trio and b) ) they are deeply talented musicians and c) they are moderately famous, but only if you already dabble in the obscure genres they come from.

Whatever alchemy brought these three old souls together (I could fill you in, but this is a music blog, not a biography) we are all the better for it. The record is a collection of traditional British folk songs. “Oh, a bunch of covers then?” you might foolishly ask. Yes, but it is much more than that.

Bonny Light Horseman pull these songs through the centuries with the ghosts of the ages still very much clinging, wraith-like, to every note. The songs don’t sound timeless, so much as they sound old. Old and powerful, like an ancient spell, or a witch’s chant.

Then they take all this lore and somehow make them feel contemporary and relatable, without losing a single drop of their mystery. They throw in modern elements like tenor sax and 12-string electric guitars, that aren’t intrusive, but instead provide subtle pathways for the modern ear to find its way back to ancient times without a hint of hokeyness.

Part of this is the production decisions. The whole album echoes like an old stone church, resonant and sparse, letting every note soak right through you. But another part of it is just the pure and simple perfection of the players on the record.

The three “stars” are the focus for sure, and Anais Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson and Josh Kaufman all play and sing beautifully. The record would be a fine folk record with just them standing around a single mic singing these classics. The guitar work is soft and feathery. It is perfectly suited to the mournful tunes they support, lifting you emotionally without ever interfering with the simple, compelling nature of these traditional tales.

However, the album goes well beyond the three principals. 14 other musicians play here and there through the record, adding depth and colour to the record that gives it a contemporary flair. I was pleased to see that two of the three sisters from the Staves even sing a little, although I didn’t notice at the time. That’s because everyone just blends in where they need to.

As for the songs, I couldn’t have asked for a more thoughtfully curated list. I knew almost none of them other than the oft-recorded “Bright Morning Stars” (which they nail, by the way) but they instantly felt like familiar friends. Even after many repeat listens (I was in no hurry to move on from this record) none ever overstayed its welcome.

The title track is a heartbreaking song of a woman bemoaning the loss of her bonny light horseman in the Napoleonic Wars. “The Roving” is a mournful tune of a love faded away. Both are sung with a wistful sweetness by Anais Mitchell.

In between those two songs we get Eric D. Johnson, sublimely turning his indie rock vocals from the Fruit Bats to a folk music style on “Deep In Love.” If this song doesn’t bring back the pangs – even the full throes – of love exploding in your heart, then I fear you may not have one. You might want to see a doctor about that.

The album goes on like this from beginning to end; calling on all the greatness of the songs of previous centuries to bring a little peace, light and love into a 2020 desperately in need of exactly that.

Best tracks: All tracks, but I am particularly in love with: Bonny Light Horseman, Deep In Love, The Roving, Blackwaterside, Magpie’s Nest, Lowlands, 10,000 Miles.

The other three songs are also really good.