Bella White’s quavering vocals rise high one moment and dip low the next, as if wavering in the wind. Her voice is gentle as a feather yet weighty as sin.
In a press release, she explains, “Five for Silver came out of a very inspiring time in the studio recording my album Among Other Things. We ended up having extra days with little to do and there are so many songs that I love to sing. So many songs that I’ve wanted to record. Each song feels like a different corner of my musical upbringing. With five songs I started thinking about that number and remembered a nursery rhyme, ‘One For Sorrow,’ and its magical superstition. It talks about seeing magpies and their number determining one’s good or bad luck. I thought I might name my EP after this in hopes of mustering some good fortune.”
I spotlighted two of the tracks when they were released as singles. Her empathetic spin on Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” positively shimmers, while her rendition of Ted Lucas’ “I’ll Find a Way (I’ll Carry It All)” encases the soul.
“Concrete and Barbed Wire” originally hails from Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. White says that it’s “one of the first songs that I remember loving to sing around the house as a kid.” Granted, it’s an odd song for a kid to sing—inspired by the Berlin Wall, it’s a poetic mediation on the divides that separate us from one another. Yet living with it for as long as she has means it’s been incorporated into her soul. She ably captures the nuances of the lyrics, in other words. The same is true of “Nobody Dies Anymore,” about the epidemic of violence in Chicago, originally by Tweedy (Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer).
The EP closes with the Gram Parsons-penned “Luxury Liner,” which most folks will identify with Emmylou Harris. It was a highlight of the International Submarine Band’s Safe at Home album, released not long after Parsons jumped ship to join the Byrds in 1968. Emmy’s version kicks off her classic 1976 album of the same name, which topped the country charts in ’77. Bella does both proud.
Cover sets are often fun but not always illuminating, especially for music fans who’ve been around the block a time or three—the songs are so ingrained in our DNA that we perceive new renditions as cheap karaoke. Such is not the case here. Bella captures the magic of the original versions and adds some of her own. It’s well worth many listens.
The Old Grey Cat 