Charlie Treat into the Wild Mystic Mountain Self Release
New Englander Charlie Treat has moved in a rootsy bluegrass direction for his second album, and he credits much of that to the inspiration that came from spending a year in the company of Americana’s darling, the talented and eclectic Sierra Ferrell. Ferrell and Treat met around the time Ferrell had just broken though career-wise and the two spent much of the following year together in Nashville and touring with her band across the US.
Treat decided to go into the studio and record his album in only four days, inspired by the recording style of his musical heroes like Woody Guthrie, Hank and Bill Monroe. In fact, he admits that most of the tracks were recorded on the first or second take, without even any prior rehearsals with the musicians. It’s a testament to those players that the result is a tour de force of exuberance and faultless musicianship. Producer Geoff Saunders (bass with Sierra Hull) gathered together a bunch of first class young players who are becoming prominent in the bluegrass and old time scenes, including Frank Evans on banjo (Slocan Ramblers), Oliver Bates Craven on mandolin (Stray Birds), and fiddle players Nate Leath (Sierra Ferrell) and Julian Pinelli (Ben Sollee).
Kicking off with the stand out barnstormer Motor Motor, Treat sings lead on all twelve self penned story-telling songs, and plays rhythm guitar, with backing vocals contributed by all of the band.
Swimming in November is autobiographical, recounting a memorable wild night spent with Sierra Ferrell, when he took her on a motor bike ride to a watering hole, ‘she’s singin’ The Magical Mystery Tour/through her helmet into my ear’. Treat says that it epitomises much about their relationship and the early heady days of a love affair. Mama Hen, contrary to what one might assume, was not actually inspired by Ferrell, but by a wild woman that Treat knew in a previous life, who was ‘a dirt biker, amateur lawyer, funk drummer’ and clearly was not to be messed with. The beautiful slow burner Bluer Than Bluegrass was also inspired by his muse, Ferrell, the line ‘you got me singin’ with the canary in the coal mine’ a reference to her West Virginia origins. She also was the catalyst for the jaunty swing-heavy Creekwater Blues and the closer Sing Child, Sing, which tells the story of how her mother encouraged her to leave home and follow her musical heart.
There’s lots more to enjoy on this sparkling recording, which consistently reminds me of Old Crow Medicine Show with its joyous looseness.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the creative Treat comes up with next - it could well be something completely different. In the meantime, seek out and enjoy this enchanting album.
Review by Eilís Boland
Whitehorse I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying Six Shooter
The notion to release a classic country album came about by chance for husband-and-wife team, Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland. With time on his hands during lockdown and with his wife and son tucked up in bed, Doucet turned to country music by way of passing the late-night hours. Having written and recorded two albums the previous year, MODERN LOVE and STRIKE ME DOWN, he started to pen numerous country tunes and send them to his wife’s phone for her approval. Impressed by what she was hearing and the creative spirit that was driving the songs, McClelland rose to the challenge and started to write similarly themed songs. McClelland’s crystal-clear vocals could not be better suited to singing country and Doucet’s trademark twangy guitar style, drawn from his love of the country licks played by Albert Lee, James Burton and Pete Anderson, are the perfect companion to his wife’s silky voice.
Entering the studio during an easing in lockdown, they recorded the twelve tracks for this album off the floor, reinvigorated by the opportunity to actually perform with other players once more. Country ballads Leave Me As You Found Me and If The Loneliness Don’t Kill Me sit comfortably alongside the western swing of Sanity Tennessee. Lock It Down and On The Road, both have more than a tad of Tammy Wynette about them. It’s not all 60s and 70s influenced either, Bet The Farm mirrors the country blues sound of Margo Price’s debut album and I Might Get Over This But I Won’t Stop Loving You – with Doucet taking the lead vocal – and 6 Feet Away, are both very much ‘lockdown’ songs reflecting couple’s mindset during the period when they were written.
It should not really come as a surprise that Whitehorse has gone ‘full on’ country with this album. Their debut self-titled album in 2011 had country flavours about it and their two cover singles, Summer Wine and We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes in the Morning from 2022, signalled the direction of I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying. It’s a genre ideally suited Whitehorse’s core talents, and they have spoken about a possible full album of classic covers in the near future. Alongside the quality of the vocals and the instrumentation on offer, what is also significantly impressive about this album is the quality of the song writing. Conceived at a most uncertain and worrisome time, and very much a team effort, these are genuine country songs. Of course, many are awash with heartbreak, but the main focus is one of true love and devotion.
It may only be the first month of 2023, but this Whitehorse honky tonker, their finest recording to date for me, is unlikely to be far from my CD player during the rest of the year.
Review by Declan Culliton
Adeem The Artist White Trash Revelry Four Quarter
Times are changing at an accelerated pace in country music in recent years for artists that would have found it practically impossible to establish themselves in previous decades. Whereas in previous times the formula for a gateway into country was predominantly threefold – male, white and straight – that model is slowly but surely evolving. Increasingly more black artists – men and women – are entering country music territory, though often with a sound closer to Memphis than Music City. Cheryl Wright’s sales may have fallen by fifty percent when she came out in 2010, but fellow LBGT performers such as Mary Gauthier, Brandy Clark, Brandi Carlisle and Amy Ray, have gone from strength to strength in more recent times, an acknowledgement that the tide has turned.
Less acclaimed, for the time being anyway, Bobby Dove, Orville Peck, Mariel Buckley, Willi Carlisle, Melissa Carper and Adeem The Artist, to name but a few, are among the latest generation of ‘queer’ artists emerging into the mainstream of country music. WHITE TRASH REVELRY was produced by Adeem The Artist’s manager Kyle Crownover - he’s also Tyler Childers’ tour manager - and the album’s eloquent lyrical style, containing both anger and warm humour, visits the writer’s fears and frustrations, both personal, social and political. In musical content, it’s a patchwork of front porch, folk ballads, southern rock, and rock ‘n’ roll, which in today’s terms plants it firmly in the Americana pigeon hole.
Similar to the solo recordings of Amy Ray, tales of Adeem The Artist’s upbringing in the rural small town of Locust, North Carolina dominate, some of which are memorable and others less celebrated. Painkillers and Magic, Baptized in Well Spirits and Going to Hell, are cases in point, powerful songs that depict childhood flashbacks (‘When I ached in the closet alone on my knees. Hallelujah, I would plead for God's mercy to wash over me’) and entrenched racism (‘Well, I met the devil at the crossroads and I asked if we could make a deal….and he said, it's true I met Robert Johnson, he showed me how the blues could work, but white men would rather give the devil praise than acknowledge a black man’s worth’). Also addressed are the duality and contradictions close to home (‘Between my whiskey jar and the heart of God, there's a simple understanding, I’ll be drinking when I'm happy and praying when I'm sad’).
Straying away from North Carolina, For Judas is a heartfelt same-sex love song based in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District, before returning closer to home with the hilarious Redneck, Unread Hicks (‘There's a trans femme trans am mandolin riff, a firebird, registered socialist. But she'll still out drink you on a Tennessee Saturday night from an old fruit jar. Yeah, these rednecks and unread hicks organizing in the trailer park’). Having given the listener a tour of their homestead and its social landscape, the final track, My America, is a wistful acoustic offering, closing the album in style.
CAST-IRON PANSEXUAL, from 2021, found Adeem touching on a difficult childhood and upbringing. WHITE TRASH REVELRY is much more than an extension of that album and goes multiple steps forward with a graceful, disciplined, and brutally frank stockpile of modern country songs.
Review by Declan Culliton
Aoife Nessa Frances Protector Partisan
In a bizarre manner, the enforced lockdown and isolation brought about by Covid may prove to be a defining catalyst in the career of Aoife McCarthy, better known professionally as Aoife Nessa Frances. Relocating to County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, and abandoning her suburban lifestyle in Dublin, was to become a reawakening for McCarthy and the springboard for her second full album PROTECTOR. Her migration came about by way of an invitation from her father to join him at his home in Clare, to where he had moved following his divorce, and to help to look after her eleven-year-old sister. Coming at a low and anxious time for McCarthy, it amounted to a life changing set of circumstances and the stimulus for her latest eight-track record.
January 2020 saw the release of LAND OF NO JUNCTION, the debut album from the Dublin singer songwriter. It attracted stellar reviews in the popular music press, resulting in festival invitations and tours to support its release. The onset of Covid put those plans on hold, which in hindsight was a blessing in disguise, McCarthy subsequently acknowledged that she was ill prepared mentally for that journey. In Clare, with the support of family around her, walking around the fields, swimming in both the Atlantic and a local lake, and driving around the countryside listening on repeat to Jim Sullivan’s lost country-folk LP UFO, calmness returned. With her mojo rebooted, each morning was subsequently spent in a cedar shed on her father’s property, writing the material for this album.
Studio time was booked in a cottage studio near Inch in Kerry during September 2020, where Aoife was joined by producer and multi-instrumentalist Brendan Jenkinson and drummer Brendan Doherty. The final pieces of the jigsaw were subsequently added with the addition of harp by Meabh McKenna, strings by Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and, finally, horn sections by Conor O’Brien of Villagers. Layer by layer the songs developed, with McCarthy’s striking vocals floating above the orchestration and with eloquent lyrics that embodied inner thoughts being forensically examined. Yes, there is grief aplenty but the lasting impressions the listener is left with are of regeneration and redemption.
Best listened to in one sitting, the eight tracks roll into one another in a dreamlike fashion. The album’s underlying theme of prevailing and moving forward figure in both the opener Way To Say Goodbye and closing track Day Out of Time. The final track to be recorded, and arguably the album’s finest, was Chariot. The title reflected McCarthy’s interest and education in tarot reading while in Clare, the chariot tarot card is a representation of determination and willpower, mirroring the writer’s renewed state of mind. If the hauntingly lonesome Emptiness Follows captures the writer’s blurred mood to perfection, This Still Life suggests a turning point or defining moment, the shoots of a new personality emerging.
Inhabiting the music orbit occupied by artists such as Tamara Lindeman (The Weather Station), Aldous Harding, and Weyes Blood, PROTECTOR is simply a masterclass in psychedelic chamber folk by a maturing artist with endless talent.
Review by Declan Culliton
H.C. McEntire Every Acre Merge
In a similar vein to LIONHEART (2018) and ENO AXIS (2020), the sights and sounds of H.C. McEntire’s beloved North Carolina feature repeatedly in her latest project, EVERY ACRE. Having recently moved from her home along the Eno River in Durham, the third solo recording from former Bellafea and Mount Moriah singer songwriter appears to be a narration on the decade she spent there. An unflinchingly forthright writer, McEntire continues to seek positives in her scripts, always soul-searching and seeking silver linings in an often burden-filled world of challenge and rejection.
Very much a team effort, McEntire engaged the production team of Missy Thang and Luke Norton, both of whom also co-produced ENO AXIS with her. Multi-instrumentalist Norton also played guitar – brilliantly it has to be said – piano, pump organ and Wurlitzer, while Thang’s contribution included keys, Farfisa, Hammond organ and synthesizer. Casey Toll (bass) and Daniel Faust (drums), both regular players with McEntire in the past, also feature. Others than joined her in the studio included like-minded artists S.G. Goodman and Amy Ray on backing vocals.
‘Walk your way into the river, is it fever or surrender?’ she sings on Shadows, a possible reference to her Bible Belt upbringing and the contradictions she faced as a gay woman attempting to exist in that environment. The album’s title was taken from the lyrics of Turpentine, a song that includes backing vocals from Indigo Girl Amy Ray, a continuation of their relationship which found McEntire covering Ray’s When You Come For Me on her debut album, LIONHEART. At six minutes in length, it’s a standout track, bursting into life mid-track with a stunning guitar break from Luke Norton. The hymn-like piano-led Dovetail, which follows, slows the pace down somewhat. A love ballad, in a similar vein to One Eye Open from ENO AXIS, it could be drawn from the author’s childhood Sunday School days. ‘It ain’t the easy kind of healing,’ McEntire sings on the imagery-invoking Rows Of Clover and she pronounces her love of the written word as well as her natural surroundings by name checking the poets Day, Ada, Laux, Berry and Olds on the opening track New View.
The jagged rocker Soft Crook finds the author struggling with her own demons, while the less muscular and dreamlike Wild for The King and album closer Gospel of a Certain Kind include simple arrangements that more than complement McEntire’s perfectly paced vocals.
It's little surprise that McEntire continues to work with similar masterly artists S.G. Goodman, Amy Ray and Angel Olsen. All four are writing and recording some of the stand-out modern alt-folk in recent times. McEntire most certainly maintains that lofty standard with EVERY ACRE, which combines poetry like lyrics, beautifully delivered vocals, and exquisite musicianship throughout.
Review by Declan Culliton
Dan Navarro Horizon Line Self Release
It’s been four years since the last release from Dan Navarro, an artist perhaps best known for his time spent as part of the duo, Lowen and Navarro. Back in the 1990s the duo had a fine run of albums and success until Lowen had to quit playing music, due to illness. He sadly passed on in 2012.
Ever since, Navarro has been active in various roles and is known as a voice actor in both film and tv work. His song writing is also recognised with many inclusions in various media channels and on this new album he writes all ten songs, with six co-writes highlighting his ability to work seamlessly with others.
Navarro called on the award winning producer Jim Scott to engineer, mix and produce the project. They worked together on a number of the Lowen-Navarro releases and it seems very appropriate that they join together again, post-Covid, to acknowledge their past history and to tip a hat in memory of Eric Lowen. The results are very engaging and impressive, with a clean sound and a quality to the production that never seems cluttered. Navarro has a rich vocal tone and he leads the project on various guitars, keyboards and percussion. He is joined by many fine players in the recording process at Plyrz studios, Santa Clarita, California. Steve Postell, who produced the last album, plays a range of guitars, including a superb Spanish guitar solo on the final track, Sleep Tonight. Elsewhere we have the talents of Doug Pettibone (Lucinda Williams),who contributes on five songs, including some atmospheric pedal steel on the stand-out Oklahoma Skies.
There is also room for Brian Whelan (Dwight Yoakam) who plays guitar and keyboards on four songs and adds harmony vocals also. Jimmy Paxson (Lindsay Buckingham) plays drums on five tracks and Mai Leisz (David Crosby, Jackson Browne) plays bass on four songs. The list goes on with Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing, on upright bass, Taras Prodaniuk & Michael Jerome (The Richard Thompson Trio) together as the tight rhythm on four of the tracks, and Phil Parlapiano (John Prine), on pianos and organ.
Peter Adams (piano, synth), Aubrey Richmond (violin, fiddle), Carlos Murguia (organ, harmony vocals), also feature, along with other contributors to the project – a veritable who’s-who of talent. Despite the various contributions across such a wide range of players, the overall sound is seamless, with producer Scott pulling out all his best skills to meld everything into a united whole. Songs like Come and Find Me and Tar Pit are very atmospheric and Circling the Drain highlights the plight that many fine themselves facing in these changing times. The title track perhaps sums it all up with the lines ‘The past is gone, but I’m still learning; gonna set my sights on the next horizon line.’ This album is a very fine addition to Navarro’s best work and comes highly recommended.
Review by Paul McGee
David Massey Darkness At Dawn Poetic Debris
A regular on the Washington DC music circuit, Massey has been playing music for many years. He released a debut album back in 2004 and in the following seventeen years has followed up with a further four releases. In 2017 he retired from his regular career as a lawyer and now devotes his time to creating music. He has a clean vocal style and also plays rhythm guitar here.
On this sixth release Massey has kept things short and turns in an impressive seven songs, just shy of twenty-five minutes. His regular band members, Jay Byrd (guitars, mandolin, vocals) and Jim Robeson (bass, vocals) are augmented by the talents of Casey O’Neill (pedal steel), Ron Stewart (fiddle), Bill Starks (organ, piano), Kristen Jones (cello) and Eric Selby (drums on four songs). Paul Goldstein guests on drums for one track also and these musicians really do justice to their inclusion on what is an impressive release.
The title track channels the loss of hope at the current state of the planet where the dreams of living free are sadly eroded by our leaders and the reality of global warming. Nothing asks the big question about what lies beyond and expresses doubt in finding any real meaning. Some superb pedal steel sets the atmosphere on this song.
Players follows this theme and looks at the parts we all play in our lives as actors upon the stage of life. Massey even includes a segment from Shakespeare’s Macbeth on the album sleeve! We do indeed come and go, in our acquaintances and our relationships.
There are two angry tracks that point the finger at the Republican party and the tenure of Donald Trump in office. The band really come alive on these songs and the fiddle playing on Watch Your Back In Hell is matched by some excellent organ dynamics. Jay Byrd shows his class on guitar on Party Of Lies and captures the mood of the arrangement with some strident licks.
The final songs are more mellow with From God We Come expressing the view that we find it in the love for each other and that community is what matters, not division. Daddy’s Wedding Dance is a love song to a daughter as she moves on through life and the words of advice counsel towards love and kindness as the key elements. Some lovely cello playing here, added to by complimentary mandolin. A very fine album and one that will bring plenty of enjoyment to the listener.
Review by Paul McGee
The Burnt Pines Don’t Look Down Self Release
This band released their self-titled debut album in 2021, and buoyed on by the warm response, they now return with a second helping of their bright melodies and vocal harmonies. Using the same line-up of studio musicians is a fine idea and brings a cohesiveness to the overall project, even down to using the same two studios – one located in Brookline, Massachusetts, and the other in Lisbon, Portugal. These days the challenge of recording remotely has been long overcome and the different continents pose no barrier to this project. Perhaps we should call it ‘Globalcana’?
The main band is comprised of the trio Kris Skovmand (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica), Miguel Sá Pessoa (piano, keyboards) and Aaron Flanders (acoustic, electric guitars, banjo, harmonica, tambourine). They are joined by Fernando Huergo (electric bass), Luis Barros (drums, percussion), and guesting on specific tracks are Dan Fox (double bass), Joe Cunningham (tenor sax), and Erica Leigh (backing vocals). The eleven original songs all have an easy flow with pleasant melody lines and the sweetly sensitive vocals of Skovmand adding an extra lightness to the sound. Their cover of the Jethro Tull song, Skating Away (On the Thin Ice Of A New Day) is a strange inclusion on first impression but it actually fits into the feel of the album quite successfully - perhaps pointing at the direction we are all facing into the future with so much uncertainty after the gradual relaxation of Covid restrictions across most of the world.
Ghost Living In My Beer is a reflective song that is laced with self-examination and perhaps refers to the fall-out from the divorce that Skovmand experienced recently. The sense of being under the spell of another is something that informs the song Your Magic Is To Blame and the same sentiment could be at the core of What Did You Come Back For? – that sense of not being in control of the things that allow you to move forward in living through challenging times.
Welcome Home! skips along with a gentle melody like a cool breeze that stays with the listener, while the darker mood and tempo of Daytime TV hints at long boring hours spent in hibernation, maybe hiding out from the world or just needing to shut out the daily routine. This is a nice introduction to new beginnings in 2023. An album with much to offer, not least the excellent musicianship and the honeyed vocal tone of Kris Skovmand.
Review by Paul McGee
My Politic Missouri Folklore: Songs and Stories From Home Self Release
This album slipped out in December last, just as the year was winding down and we were all looking back on our favourite music that landed during the year. It represents the tenth release from Missouri born friends Kaston Guffey and Nick Pankey. As with all their previous albums it proves to be an engaging and interesting experience, heightened by the superb harmonies and wonderful interplay among the musicians.
It stands as a love letter of sorts to their original birthplace of Missouri as seen through the perspective of mature recollection and reflection. However, sometimes a look back through the rear-view mirror can be less than welcome and serve to dig up too many old ghosts. The theme running through songs like Eminence, Buzzards On A Powerline, Message On the Radio and Vanishing Vapors is that of growing up in a small town with little to do and no prospects ahead for a life of any real substance. Getting up to childhood mischief morphs into teenage angst and further into addiction as local youths struggle to find meaning and a way to escape the tedium of daily existence. Questioning the status quo is not something that is encouraged and if you are not inclined to stay in line with the old ways then the only alternative is escape and face the unknown that lies beyond.
Interestingly Springsteen wrote about dead-end jobs and the lack of choice facing blue collar workers in the big cities where factory work was all there was to aspire to. Kaston Guffey sings about these same issues but from the perspective of small rural towns and the reality of wanting to break out and run towards something bigger in the cities. The juxtaposition is interesting and both perspectives share the hopes for a better life, whichever way you come at the compromises faced.
Despite having left, you can never really escape the memories forged in childhood. They linger into adolescence and manifest through adulthood whenever something triggers a frame of reference on the journey from there to here. My Politic is never overly concerned what other people think however, driven by the conviction that it is always better to be true to oneself, and Kaston Guffy has trodden a very personal path in his honest and heartfelt song-writing. Short-Sighted People In Power: A Home Recording, released in 2020, nailed Kaston’s frustrations to the mast and gained him as many friends as it did enemies in his political protests on the divided political state of the United States at the time. There is nothing more personal than your politics, of course, and Kaston came out swinging against the hypocrisy and the prejudice that he found everywhere.
This time out, he has penned fourteen songs that are beautifully performed and very poignant. His writing has always displayed an acute insight on the human condition and his astute observations are as finely honed as ever. The sound of acoustic guitars, easy fingerstyle delivery and gentle melodies supported by fiddle, pedal steel, mandolin and dobro make for a heady mix when absorbing his insightful words.
The songs range from personal memories, to looking at various scenarios through the lives of others. Whether the people are real or imaginary, it doesn’t much matter, once the sentiment and the message of the song comes through. Kaston has always been able to deliver on a vision that exposes what lies in the past and also shapes what awaits into the future. Childhood demons meet with trying to find your place in a small town. Characters come and go, leaving impressions of lives well lived or indeed, wasted.
Songs like Cursing At the Night and At the Morning (memories that bite), Maybe It’s Love (random liaisons between strangers), Gina and Leroy (dead-end lives, trying to change), Albuquerque (a junkie trying to reform in prison), Driving Home To You (death of a brother in the war), are all tales of quiet dignity with people trying to make life work out better.
The sweet vocal tones are the perfect accompaniment for the fluid musicianship and style on this album. At a very generous fifty-four minutes in length there is something here for all tastes. Some key lines that have stayed with me include the following gems;
What A Life finds Kaston in reflective mood, pondering our daily routines and our repetition in mundane activities - ‘Surprises don't come easy, And other times they do, Routine can mean stability, Or it can be the death of you.’
Dog and a Bone, while a love song, also admits to that sense of ‘otherness’ that we all feel from time to time ‘I can feel homesick, When I’m sitting at home, Must be another dimension where I sometimes go, It's a strange affliction, Feeling empty and whole.’
Sleepin’ Off the Blues speaks about being stuck in a rut and trying to find the courage to leave. ‘I'm just dying while I wait for someone to say they found me.’
Final song, Vanishing Vapors, really looks into the eye of all this circling that we do as a species with the lines ‘You can't shake the look you share with another, Somebody desperate like you, Looking hard for the line, That's running through time, Tryin’ to find out what's honest & true.’ Really just sums up the whole thing in a nutshell, looking for connection so we don’t feel quite so alone.
Another masterclass in subtle artistry. A quite superb album.
My Politic is Kaston Guffey (Vocals, Guitar) and Nick Pankey (Harmony Vocals, Guitar + Mandolin on "The Dog & The Bone" & "Chasing Tomorrow"). All songs written by Kaston Guffey and produced/ arranged by My Politic.
Other musicians on the album are John Mailander (fiddle, mandolin, mandocello), and Steve Peavey (pedal steel, dobro, coodercaster, 10 string lap steel). Josh Washam added bass and also engineered & mixed at his Ground Sound Studios in Nashville.
Review by Paul McGee