Parton, Welch and Faithfull: new music this summer from three veteran divas

Editor’s note: we’re happy to welcome Steve Barnes to the mix here at lgbtSr. Steve is a freelance writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in such publications as ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal.

Steve Barnes Summer may normally be the time for music that makes a good backdrop for a strong, cold drink or a night of outdoor, beachside dancing. But while the shadows cast by recent releases from Lady Gaga and Adele are still to be felt in mid-July, three other divas have brought out new CDs that should appeal to listeners looking for stories and sounds that go a little beyond shaking your booty on the dance floor. The last week of June saw strong new releases from the longtime queen of country music (Dolly Parton), one of alt-country’s most respected figures (Gillian Welch) and the equal parts Mick Jagger and Lotte Lenya cocktail that is Marianne Faithfull. The wait for all of them to bring out new work has been a long one (more than two years for Faithfull, three for Parton and eight for Welch), but in all cases the wait has been more than justified by the end result.
“Drop this doomsday attitude and let the spirit flow,” Dolly sings in “In the Meantime,” the opener on “Better Day” (Dolly Records). Dolly doesn’t break new ground here, but she puts enough energy and humor into her well-established formula to please any but the most persnickety listener. In terms of its sound, “Better Day” serves up the countrypolitan Dolly who made her comeback on 2008’s “Backwoods Barbie,” with a crack Nashville session band and backup singers who include Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris. Her bid for airplay on country-music radio stations is strongest on “Together You and I,” the first single from the CD (check it out ). But while the stripped-down bluegrass roots that emerged in full force on such releases as 1999’s “The Grass is Blue” and 2001’s “Little Sparrow” are obscured a bit by the high-gloss treatment Dolly’s songs get here, she is—as you’d expect—at pains to emphasize how down-home she still is. “Country Is as Country Does,” which she wrote with Mac Davis, tells us that she’s “country-fied and country fed” and will be that way until she’s “country dead.” But with Dolly, nothing, not even the religious faith that permeates a lot of these songs, is as simple as it seems. “I’m country,” she tells us with a wink that’s all but visible, “but now that don’t mean I can’t go to town.”
Gillian Welch came to Nashville after attending Boston’s Berklee School of Music, and her music is just about completely free of the gleeful show-biz that is such a big part of Dolly’s work. From her first album, 1996’s “Revival,” Welch, in tandem with fellow singer and guitarist Dave Rawlings, has recorded plain-spoken songs that feel as if they’ve been unearthed from some secret cache deep in an Appalachian valley. “The Harrow and the Harvest” (Acony Records) keeps that trend going. Welch attributes the eight-year gap between this CD and 2003’s “Soul Journey” to dissatisfaction with the songs she’d written during that time. While I’m no position to speak on the material that she discarded, I can say that the songs that she and Rawlings perform here are among her best. (One highlight, “A Dark Turn of Mind,” can be heard here. Unlike Dolly’s songs, the few spots of humor to be found here are dryly mordant. “That’s the way the cornbread crumbles,” she wistfully sings in the CD’s closer, “That’s the Way the Whole Thing Ends,” and the listener isn’t sure about whether to laugh or cry. Just about all of the songs tell tales of loss and desolation, but they are delivered with such beautiful singing and guitar work (Welch’s and Rawlings’s voices and guitars are the only instruments on the CD) that none of it feels depressing. Anyone who has an interest in traditional American music should give “The Harrow and the Harvest” a listen.
Marianne Faithfull is neither American nor traditional, but “Horses and High Heels” (naïve records) is, like Welch’s CD, a high-water mark in her career. Her third collaboration with producer Hal Willner, it mixes ten well-chosen covers of songs from such composers as Carole King and Allen Toussaint (plus an incredible version of the a Shangri-Las tune, “Past Present Future”) with four of Faithfull’s own compositions. Faithfull’s voice is, as it has always been, a matter of personal taste. To some, her weathered near-tenor is not a musical instrument. But to others (myself included) she is a great interpretive singer on the level of an Edith Piaf or Marlene Dietrich. Listen to her sing Lesley Duncan’s “Love Song,” which you might remember from Elton John’s “Tumbleweed Connection” album, and see what you think. So while Dolly’s CD is likely the only one of these that is almost sure to make the margaritas go down easier as you sit on whatever warm-weather back porch you happen to be frequenting, all three of them are rewarding listens and will make you feel far more sophisticated than the adolescent partiers putting Lady Gaga’s “Judas” through its paces yet one more time.]]>