![]() Then again, there’s no shame in catchy, concise, sharply executed tunes that communicate mildly fresh takes on relationships, either– and this album has more than a few. Sure, the band’s buzzing guitars, thick reverb, and bouncy rhythms lack any particular spark of originality that might help listeners avoid compulsively thinking of names like Ramones, the Jesus and Mary Chain, or, yes, the Strokes. ![]() But, to resurrect an old punk cliché, they’re the right chords. Their songs all use the same three chords. The Vaccines – What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?Īdmittedly, The Vaccines’ songs aren’t really about very much, and when they are, the subject matter is a bit gauche (all that stuff on ‘Norgaard’ about fancying a girl who’s 17 and “probably not ready” – it’s mildly creepy). As a gathering-in of all that’s best about their duality, The Harrow & The Harvest eschews the cosmic Plough and settles instead for the blessings of a more earthly crop. The gospel according to Welch and Rawlings is one that embraces darkness alongside light, pain alongside joy, the briar as one with the rose, clear-eyed truth and hazy obfuscation. And while Gillian’s songs are outstanding in their own right, what’s more amazing is the synthesis of these two incredible musicians and their ability to take seemingly simple folk arrangements and turn them into something awe-inspiring. #THE VACCINES ALBUM REVIEW FULL#This album abandons any trace of the full band sound found on Soul Journey, which featured drums and electric guitar, and instead plucks along with the spotlight on Welch’s songwriting, Rawlings’ masterful guitar work, and their vocals that harmonize in lockstep throughout. Here’s hoping that next time they drop the harrow and go gather some of the wild stuff growing by the creek. Nevertheless, you can hear in these songs that this crop required backbreaking work to deliver. There cannot be another musical duet around at the moment who are able to make two acoustic guitars and two voices produce a sound that is so subtle and yet powerful….This is American folk music at its very best.Įven if it fails to meet impossibly high expectations, The Harrow & The Harvest offers a handful of keepers while moving Welch and Rawlings (hopefully) past their writers’ block. ![]() The interplay between Welch and David Rawlings’s guitars is dazzlingly expert as they dance around the slow, melancholy beauty of Welch’s voice. But, if you keep listening, you find the disc revealing layers upon layers – a tall order for a disc which mostly just includes two voices and two stringed instruments (with an exception or two here and there). The fourth and fifth times through, it’s a sentimental experience. Give it a second and third run, and the songs begin to assault you one at a time. At her best, Welch is never mere background music.Īt first listen, The Harrow and the Harvest is a very good record, but it seems like not much has changed for Welch in the past eight years. It’s the perfect record for front-porch reading on a warm summer afternoon, in large part because it doesn’t command attention. Long trafficking in a sometimes spare yet intricately drawn sort of Americana that could fit just as comfortably at the turn of the 20th century, their latest delivers the same deceptively simple alchemy of dustily lilting voices, vivid lyrical twists and crisp acoustic flourishes.Īnd yet The Harrow & The Harvest doesn’t seem all that substantial. It is the best kind of record: one that lures you in and soothes you with harmonies and banjo, only to leave you wondering what the hell just happened. And yet The Harrow is especially full of drama that occurs off-camera. Many of their albums are like this – carefully written to sound like folk manuscripts handed down across the ages, illuminated by Rawlings’s eloquent guitar. It is replete with events alluded to, but unsung. The Harrow & The Harvest is simply one of the richest, most expansive roots albums to be released in some time.Īnd yet, on repeated listens The Harrow & the Harvest feels more mysterious than this asceticism suggests. Listening to these songs, one can hear that the eight years taken between releases has caused Gillian Welch to ruminate and pour all of her weighing up and accounting of life’s sad twists and turns into one of her best albums. ![]() ![]() It would be inaccurate to call The Harrow & The Harvest a concept album, but many of the songs-most notably the progressively titled “The Way It Goes,” “The Way It Will Be” and “The Way The Whole Thing Ends”-are subtly connected by themes of coming to terms with the past and finding the resolve to move on. ![]()
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