Customer Reviews

The Harrow & The Harvest

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Whatever the reason Gillian Welch and David Rawlings waited eight years to release this much anticipated album, we're rewarded for our patience.

The 10 tracks on "The Harrow & the Harvest" are well-penned and executed. In an interview with The Australian, Gillian said the duo struggled with getting the material just right for this album. And got it right they did. Gillian returns to her cowgirl-boots-in-a-daisy-field folk, dark lyrics and melodies with just enough melancholia to make you feel good.

Gone are the drums that adorned her previous album, "Soul Journey," (the drum work on that LP wasn't flashy, but rather curiously echoed the plodding snare thumps found on Neil Young's "Harvest.")

Standout tracks include "Dark Turn of Mind" and "Down Along the Dixie Line." But the whole album flows and is best enjoyed in its entirety, in solitude.

"The Harrow & the Harvest" is a must-have for Gillian Welch fans.

If you're new to her, this is a great starting point. But there's no need to tell you to explore her back catalog. After hearing this, you will.

one of things i noticed reading the other reviews is
the songs that have resonated most with me are not the same as
some of the ones that have resonated with others-- which is to
say this is a dynamic album that will touch everyone in different
ways. i've been dying for this record. they've been playing
"the way it will be" live since the time of soul journey, 8 years ago.
i've listened to the record three times since yesterday
(i don't want to overdo it). gillian's voice in a room, with
two guitars, a banjo, some hands, whatever.. it cuts to my core
and so my review will be biased because her lilts and syncopated
notes walk the edge of despair and something silver. for me, her
soulfulness resonates in a similar realm as that of otis redding-
for different reasons of course.

pretty much, i just want to thank gillian and david for putting
out another record. from the stunningly pretty guitar work on
"scarlet town" (whatever key that's in makes david's guitar
sound like copper pennies falling into a well.)
to the acid, lonesome message of "the way it will be" to
the timely and timeless, soul-stirring "hard times"--
and everything in between.

i'm grateful for this music.

This is much more than the release of an album. The last time that we properly heard from Gillian Welch was eight years ago when Lehman brothers were still in profit and Facebook was a new business start up. Granted she has toured extensively in that time and made appearances on "Friend of a Friend" in 2009 the album by her musical soul mate Dave Rawlings. She also had a large starring role on the Decemberists excellent "King is Dead" this year so 2011 is almost proving hyperactive for this great singer. So let us start by warmly welcoming her back and stating that the "The Harvest and the Harrow" is magnificent and well worth the long wait. Listeners will note immediately that it is an album of relative sparsity in terms of instrumentation, Rawlings presence is musically vital but never overwhelming and Welch herself has moved away from some of the playfulness on "Soul Journey" into a territory, which tends to explore the darker themes of her best album "Time (the revelator)". More than this it harks back to a heartfelt traditionalism which mines something very deep in American music.

"Scarlet town" has the Appalachian ambience of Caleb Mayer and is a great opener with Rawlings accompaniment showing the master musician at his best and a memorable chorus where Welch croons "look at that deep well, look at that dark day". Next up is "Dark turn of mind" a country blues lament that gently rolls along so slowly that you fear it might stop, but is genuinely exquisite. Three songs on the album start with the words "The Way" and the third song will excite those who have longed for the release of the live favourite "Throw me a rope" now renamed "The way it will be". It hints at Neil Young's "On the beach" and is an utter standout. The middle section of the album builds on this tremendous opening and comprises the drug referenced "The way that it goes", the intense six minute plus ruminating dark epic "Tennessee" (perhaps the albums nearest equivalent to "Revelator") and "Down along the Dixie Line" full of references to the deep south and lines drawn from the original civil war anthem "Dixie". In this setting the harmonizing of Welch and Rawlings is memorizing and the way he weaves his guitar lines effortless. Thus when "Six white horses" bounds in with harmonicas and handclaps its almost a full gear change upwards but a delightful one.

The album concludes with "Hard times" which could have been sung the day after the end of the civil war and it would have had resonance for that resolute generation of Americans. The penultimate song "Silver dagger" is possibly the weakest on the album sounding like a reworking of "You are my sunshine" yet other country artists would give their right arm to cover this. Finally the last of the "The Way" trilogy is the aptly named the "The Way the whole thing ends" which could have sound tracked Peter Bogdanovich's stunning portrait of a atrophied West Texas town "The Last Picture Show" as Welch gently laments "that's the way the cornbread crumbles/that the way the whole thing ends". In the last analysis "The Harrow and the Harvest" is deceptively simple album but on deeper listens we discover hidden subtleties and gradations, which Welch and Rawlings have crafted into their best album to date. A warning - this reviewer has no objectivity when it comes to these master musicians but despite this when sheer class of this calibre hits you full force all you can do is hope that we don't have to wait until 2019 for another instalment of such virtuosity.

Okay, I was put off by the cornball cover illustration--too oracular by a half. I listened to the CD once this morning, and was both pleased and slightly disappointed. After the earlier heights achieved by this sterling duo ("The Revelator" being my favorite), this sounded quite decent but a little generic, assembled from the Olde Appalachian parts bin, however beautifully played. I listened to it again just now, and folks, it's growing on me. Nobody can play guitar quite like David Rawlings--sure, he's got that old Epiphone archtop and makes liberal use of the capo and alternate tunings, but his touch and melodic conception have nothing to do with the tools, everything to do with his ear and (to be more elusive) his soul. The vocal harmonies are exquisite as always. "Down Along The Dixie Line" still sounds a little automatic to me, at least lyrically. It's like a discarded song from the second Band album (not such a bad thing to be). But "Scarlet Town" or "Tennesse" or "The Way It Will Be"--well, they're sounding deeper each time I put them on.

PS Studying the cover a bit more, I'll concede that it's probably tongue-in-cheek: I don't think Gillian Welch really considers herself the Minerva of American roots music. But you never know. Increasingly addictive music, in any case.

Southern Appalachia, a place I love and where my daughter was born, is of profound natural beauty and, equally, great hardship and poverty. If you're from the mountains, you'll be sure to count on one thing: even the lowliest, leaf-gawking tourists, who pull in your town with their big shiny Buicks with New York tags, will be totally convinced that they are culturally, intellectually and personally superior to you in every way. They'll come to fish, hunt or pass through to other places, and they'll look down on and call you hick, Hee-Haw, Country-Bumpkin, hillbilly, Deliverance redneck, and such. It's hard to tell about the hard life, hard work, hard times hard places and the good people of that region. So much of what is American, in literature and music, derives from that poor, misunderstood and maligned corner of America where the Irish, Scots , Welch, Germans and Austrians met to toil in the coal mines and small mountain farms. Here the Celtic fiddlers and harpists met the Alpine yodlers with their zithers, and the mountain dulcimer, hammered dulcimer and autoharps and American folk music was born. Relatively isolated in small communities deep in the hills and hollers, they gave birth to what was to become one of the primary roots of popular American music. Bluegrass, folk, white gospel, and country music in general , trace straight back to Appalachia. Here, with these two fine musicians, if you listen carefully, you can still hear traces of the true, old Celtic musical traditions , and also Alpine mountain music....primitive sensibilities with melodic sophistication, rich in spirituality and expressionistic storytelling. Simple, stark, and veiled in the white gospel, the hillbilly tradition is carried throughout this album - sentimental and melancholy. Welch and Rawlings cook up tight mountain style two part harmonies and hard-core hillbilly spirituals and they understood old-time music intrinsically, the way writers like Steinbeck, Annie Pruitt, Dorothy Allison and Cormac McCarthy understand the regions they write about, whether they're from there or not.

The only thing that I don't like is that David Rawlings is not given equal billing. Nobody can play guitar like that boy on his 1934 Epiphone. Gillian is all that, but Rawlings is outright brilliant.

The Harrow & the Harvest is good as they say; no better. Previous albums, including the great Time (the Revelator), grew out of the particulars of Gillian Welch's experience. She pulled some of the finest music of recent years out of personal discomfort and confusion. Expecting more of the same, I was amazed to find that she has all but vanished in The Harrow & the Harvest. If anything, this spare and impersonal presentation of a bleak, pitiless and fatalistic strain of human experience is even more improbably gorgeous than previous efforts. From the antique English folk inflected "Scarlet Town," through the "Six White Horses" comment on "Your Are My Sunshine," to a hint of "Wooden Ships" in "The Way It Will Be" (formerly "Throw Me a Rope") and too many other echoes to mention, she and David Rawlings have distilled their musical heritage into songs that are timeless and universal. The cover art is no brag.

Columbia Records producer Bob Johnston once said of Bob Dylan in his Highway 61 Revisited heyday, "He can't help what he's doing. He's got the Holy Spirit about him." Whether or not we subscribe to Johnston's religious interpretation of the phenomenon he recorded, Dylan was plugged into the mythic. On The Harrow & the Harvest, Welch and Rawlings are working at that level. They're consummate musicians delivering a clinker-free performance of music that ought to be depressing as hell but leaves the listener with her flinty chin stuck out. Yes, it's going to be knocked off but, knowing that, the beauty of humanity is in the dignity of sticking it out.

The title of this review already tells you I'm biased. I've been listening to, and have played, bluegrass and old-timey music for a long time, and Gillian Welch has become an all-time favorite. In "Harrow & the Harvest, she has produced another haunting, heart-tugging, album that takes my mind to "other places." Physicists sometimes mention the "elegance of simplicity" referring to some of the answers to deep scientific questions. I would like to borrow the same phrase to describe the songs and performances of Ms. Welch and Mr. Rawlings. These songs elicit the flesh and blood lives of her characters, and the primary experiences of living.

I'd like to add that that Mr. Rawlings has provided Ms. Welch a near-perfect blend of harmony that would lead some to believe that they were siblings. Rawlings' voice never overrides or stands in front of Ms. Welch or the song. It is just the right and subtle flavor that makes the recipe reach its peak. I believe his voice is the "X" factor.

One cannot listen to Gillian Welch's discography without recognizing the consistent quality of simplicity, mournfulness, "break out grin" humor, and downright beauty. She has the perfect voice to tell the stories that reach human hearts.

After eight long years I thought (Time) The Revelator and Revival would be enough to sustain my infrequent yet powerful cravings for Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' unique brand of Americana. The excellent new album, "The Harrow & The Harvest" is a welcome addition to her catalog. Welch's voice is an intoxicating blend of lonesome hope and ragged despair. After a listen, I almost feel as if I should check my bare feet for red clay from a back country road. She WILL transport you... Mr. Rawlings out of this world acoustic guitar playing completes the listening experience. Of course, I'm preaching to the converted; Gillian's fan base is as solid as her songwriting.

Generally, there are two kinds of Gillian Welch songs: 1. The heart wrenching ballad (or) 2. Upbeat bluegrass/country. This album contains plenty of the former (The Way it Will Be, Dark Turn of Mind etc.) and very little of the latter (The Way it Goes, Six White Horses.) Some have called this a sleepy record. I would rather call it a slow burner. The flames may not be set on high, but they give off a warm glow. These tunes are haunting and rewarding. Would one expect anything less from something titled "The Harrow and The Harvest." More importantly, fans wouldn't expect anything less from Welch and Rawlings. They won't be disappointed.

with so much time since the last release, i was afraid that, once again, i had let my expectations rise so high that i was bound to be disappointed. i should have known better. i've never been less than thrilled with each gillian welch/david rawlings release through the years (and i've never come out of one of their concerts less than ecstatic/manic, either), and this new release has thrilled me/moved me/inspired me once again.
with "the harrow and the harvest" blasting throughout the the house, i have found myself, more than once, standing totally still--probably with mouth agape--just taking in the beauty and real-ness of this music.

If you still had doubts (how could you?), this one will surely convince you that gillian welch and david rawlings are nothing less than national treasures.

I THOUGHT I loved Gillian Welch. I have her other CDs and enjoy listening to them. Her voice and her persona are so unique, and she transports me to a world I don't visit often. But this CD is soooo sleepy. Yes, the voice is there, but I still haven't been able to listen to the whole CD all the way through - after about 5 tracks I just want to hear some peppier music. Maybe it will grow on me after I have heard it a few more times and become familiar with the tunes and the lyrics, but honestly? At the moment putting it back in the car CD player feels like a chore, and I do have to be adequately caffeinated if I'm going to drive and listen. I'm disappointed.

Update 8/9/11 - well, I finally managed to listen to the whole thing again. Turns out it's pretty perfect for Sunday mornings. I also listened to some of the older Gillian Welch tunes that I love. I decided to give this one more star. Although many of the songs sound like they are being sung in slow motion, this really is vintage GW and a worthy addition to her canon. (There are a couple of relatively upbeat songs.) Her voice is pure and strong and blends beautifully with David Rawlings. The lyrics are also typical GW, a little sad, rueful, older and wiser. Yes, it might put you to sleep, but sometimes that's what you want. It sounds like she is moving serenely through a hot Appalachian day.