Posts Tagged ‘Heal’

Allison Moorer at Cat’s Cradle, 2/22/20

Posted: February 23, 2020 in 2020, 2020s, Allison Moorer, Concert
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Singer-songwriter Allison Moorer wove a spellbinding acoustic set at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC, last night, taming a semi-raucous audience primarily there to see her husband, master singer-storyteller Hayes Carll. 

She opened with the ominous “Bad Weather” from her recent Blood album. Stripped to its core, its plaintive power was even more pronounced than on album, with the metaphoric storm clouds gathering inside the ramshackle music hall’s main room, which – in many respects – is little more than Philadelphia’s Boot & Saddle on steroids. (Speaking of steroids, Allison mentioned that both she and Hayes came down with a bad flu while on the recent Cayamo music cruise and, although over it, were both taking some form of steroid to help bolster their throats.)

“The Rock and the Hill” was stunning. Her vocals inhabited the soul, just about, much as they do in this Paste performance:

Two songs from her 1998 debut followed: “Alabama Song” and “A Soft Place to Fall.” While introducing the latter, she recalled that she first played Cat’s Cradle not long after that album’s release, when she opened for Junior Brown. She then made a self-deprecating joke about the trajectory of her career, given that – this night, at any rate – she’s still opening for somebody else. 

“Nightlight,” a song from Blood, followed. During her Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross last fall, she talked of how – at that point in time – she couldn’t get through it without tearing up. It’s a moving number about how her sister comforted her during the frightful nights of their childhoods.

“Thunderstorm/Hurricane” (from her 2015 album Down to Believing) was next. Thematically speaking, though inspired by a different life storm, it’s in sync with the Blood material – the “Bad Weather” materialized, in a sense. “Let it pour over me/Holy water make me clean/Drive and drive and I disappear/Like I was never here/Everything is washed away/A thunderstorm, a hurricane…”

Her set concluded with the soul-salving “Heal.” As I’ve said before, in another era it would have been played on the radio alongside Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” It’s that tremendous a song. While introducing it, Allison talked about how she thought she’d finished writing the Blood album when, a month before the sessions to record it, the song’s title came to her. She called Mary Gauthier and cajoled her into coming over to help write it and, not long thereafter, a classic song was born.  

(Obvious from my use of the Paste footage, my videos didn’t come out all that well. Allison looks like a floating fluorescent light.) 

Later, she joined husband Hayes Carll for three songs, including a very funny “None’ya” in which he “over explained” some of the lyrics. (Hayes, who we’ve seen twice before, was laugh-out-loud funny with his introductions and intra-song monologues; and his songs are flat-out brilliant. Always worth seeing with or without Allison.)

During a meet-and-greet with Hayes prior to the show, she mentioned that she’s halfway through another memoir, this one about raising her son, and that she spends about an hour writing the posts for her blog. (Given that it took me three hours to write this little review, that fact astounds me.)

Today’s Top 5: Remember November – Songs of the Year, 2019

Posted: November 30, 2019 in 2010s, 2019, Album of the Year, Allison Moorer, Bruce Springsteen, Juliana Hatfield, Kelsey Waldon, Remember December, Song of the Year, The Three O'Clock, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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Tonight, the streets outside our home will be littered with limousines and Town Cars as nominees, presenters and industry bigwigs arrive at the Old Grey Cat’s annual, and much ballyhooed, Album of the Year shindig. Select music artists and assorted others will walk the red carpet (and UNC Tar Heels welcome mat), pose for photographers, and field questions from reporters covering the event.

As is customary, after weeks of spirited deliberations, each member of the awards committee submitted their top pick for the past year via a web form, with the tabulated results printed out, folded over and placed sight unseen into an envelope that was then hermetically sealed and dropped in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch. No one, and I mean no one, knows the contents of said envelope. No one, that is, except for the evening’s host, the great seer, soothsayer, and sage, Catnac the Magnificent.

But before that Big Reveal, there’s this: Song of the Year. 

It is not a new addition to the fete, but an occasional one, and generally relegated to a single mention during the main awards summary. This year, however, due to the strength of several songs, the committee has deigned to break it out into a separate “teaser” post.

The “committee,” of course, is me, JGG. As I’ve said before, and will likely say again in tomorrow’s Album of the Year post, I am who I am: a middle-aged white guy with catholic tastes and a whimsical sense of humor that, some days, only my wife and cat appreciate. In my estimation, and to switch to serious mode, music lifts us when sad, calms us when mad, makes bad times manageable and good times even better. My picks come from what I’ve either purchased or added to my Apple Music library, which is packed with longtime favorites and albums discovered through reviews.

And with that out of the way, here’s today’s Top 5: Remember November – Songs of the Year, 2019.

1) In another era, Allison Moorer’s hymn-like “Heal” (from her Blood album) would have sat atop the charts for weeks on end, been played on the radio alongside Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” and – as those two songs – covered by Aretha Franklin. It’s that powerful. It’s that perfect. Soul-salving set to song, it’s a soaring – yet restrained – prayer for inner peace. It’s my Song of the Year.

2) In some respects, Bruce Springsteen’s “Hello Sunshine” follows a similar thematic blueprint. As I wrote upon its release back in May, “it’s a masterful treatise on melancholia and depression” that describes Bruce’s “desire to step from the shadows and stand in the sunshine.” 

3) Kelsey Waldon’s “Kentucky, 1988” (from her White Noise/White Lines album), on the other hand, is less a treatise and more a celebration of roots. Kelsey may have been born of “two imperfect people” and weathered tough times as a kid, but that doesn’t stop her from looking back with wonder.   

4) The Three O’Clock – “Tell Me When It’s Over.” Not to tip my hand, but the 3×4 project was one of my favorite albums of the year – and how could it not be? The Three O’Clock’s rendition of this Dream Syndicate song tosses me through spacetime like few other tunes… as does the album as a whole. (That said, the unofficial video itself is best listened to, not watched.)

5) Juliana Hatfield – “Lost Ship.” Released way back in January, Juliana’s Weird album was a damn good outing and this moody track, with its mercurial guitar break, remains – for me, at least – its piece de resistance. It takes me places.

First Impressions: Allison Moorer’s Blood (The Album)

Posted: October 26, 2019 in Allison Moorer, First Impressions
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It’s easy to look back in anger, but long-held acrimony plumbs the depths of the soul only to rise into view like a wave from the seemingly calm sea. It’s unexpected and sometimes all-consuming, and sometimes grows into a tsunami that endangers everything and everyone in its path, including ourselves. And when or if it recedes, we tend to sidestep blame, pointing elsewhere to explain away our actions.

We take that anger from long ago, in other words, and unconsciously direct it elsewhere.

Learning to accept that which we cannot change, of embracing empathy and forgiveness not just for those who transgressed against us but for how we processed it, that’s not so easy. Yet it’s necessary in order to move on.

To that end, Allison Moorer’s latest album, Blood, is a compelling companion piece to her just-released memoir of the same name. In both, she delves into the tragedy that shaped her and her sister Shelby Lynne’s lives. Their parents had a volatile marriage due to their father’s heavy drinking and violent rages, which culminated one August morning in 1986 when he murdered their mother, from whom he was estranged, before taking his own life.

The 10 songs that make up the album explore the family dynamics that led to the tragedy, as well as its lingering impact. “Bad Weather,” the opening track, portends what’s to come in the song cycle, with long-ago storm clouds hovering over her in the present. “Cold Cold Earth” – which she first recorded years ago – then offers a journalistic account of the storm in question. As she summarizes in the last line, “such a sad, sad story, such a sad, sad world.” 

“Nightlight” revisits a memory that defines the madness from a child’s perspective, engendering sadness while simultaneously explaining her bond with her sister, who provided comfort in dark times; in a way, it’s the flip side to Shelby’s “I’ll Hold Your Head” on Revelation Road: “Lying here together in the dark/You might not think I feel your heart/I promise you I do, it’ll always be us two/you’re my nightlight/you’re my nightlight.”

The taut “The Rock and the Hill” then slides behind her mother’s eyes:

The two songs that follow, “I’m the One to Blame,” and “Set My Soul Free,” are set from the perspective of her father, an aspiring songwriter whose talent didn’t match his dreams. The former features lyrics he wrote long before his demons got the best of him (Shelby added the music after his death), yet in some ways they foreshadow the tragedy to come: “Only time will tell/How we’ll get along/Love is not the same/once the trust is gone.” The latter returns to the August morning in question, when bitterness from a lifetime’s disappointments led him to do the unthinkable: “I can’t stand to see the sun shine one more time/without her, without her.”

From that point on, the song cycle veers to Allison coming to grips with the psychic scars that incident left her with. In “The Ties That Bind,” she asks of her father’s legacy, “Why do I carry what isn’t mine? Can I take the good and leave the rest behind? Can I let go and watch it all unwind/Can I untie the ties that bind?” “All I Wanted (Thanks Anyway)” moves past those rhetorical questions and faces the one thing she wanted that he never gave, his love, and the things he gave (“your phrases and your fists”) that no one would want. 

The touching title track tackles her adult bond with Shelby – “you don’t have to explain/I’ve got your blood running through my veins” – before closing with a snippet of “Side by Side,” the same American Songbook tune that Shelby closed “I’ll Hold Your Head” with.  

“Heal,” the final song, is both an epiphany and a plea set to song. Co-written with Mary Gauthier, it recognizes that to step from the darkness one needs to consciously choose to walk into the light. “Help me lay my weapons down/Help me give the love I feel/Help me hold myself with kindness/And help me heal.”

In short, Blood is a soulful treatise that resonates like few albums I’ve heard this year, let alone this decade. It’s a personal journey through pain and darkness that shares universal truths about life, love and forgiveness. Don’t miss experiencing it.