Friday, January 8, 2010

Dave Rawlings Machine A Friend Of A Friend


I sure like Dave Rawlings Machine. This is the other half of a songwriting team that includes Gillian Welch. Can't go wrong with that. In fact Dave Rawlings new album is called A Friend Of A Friend and that is absolutely the kind of sentiment I think is involved here. You can't contrast this so much from a Gillian Welch album as it sounds like a Gillian Welch album except it's Dave Rawlings on the forefront. It is slightly more band oriented as the backing band is none other than old timey greats Old Crow Medicine Show. So you can conjecture what is going on here, a fine, fine acoustically driven folk album full of melancholy, antiquity, lovelorn unrequited love and all those other things that you have come to expect from these various sepia-toned modern folkies. Gillian Welch is here too and in the photographs of the album art. And like you feel Dave's presence on her albums you feel her presence here but Dave Rawlings is the one up on the plate for this particular namesake.


As with albums like this, I am always intrigued by the covers or re dos of other songs past and present. When Ryan Adams came out with Heartbreaker on Bloodshot back in 2000 Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch were essentially his backing group for that album. Dave and Ryan wrote a song together called To Be Young (is to be sad, is to be high). A fine song and standout on that album. Dave Rawlings slowed it down and folked it up in this nice re-work of it, his high thin voice is built for these gentle borderline bluegrass tunes.


The other beautiful re-work of a song is the latter half a medley he covers Neil Young's terrific and poignant song Cortez The Killer. It's very slow, acoustic style with just meager arrangement. Very wonderful. I certainly hope to hear more of Dave Rawlings Machine in the future because this was one of the better folk albums I heard in 2009.

No comments:

Post a Comment