Gillian Welch

May 2 - 9, 1 9 9 6

REVIVAL

Welch lives up to the adage that some people's writing resembles their bodies. Bone lean, neither her body (as pictured on the CD's cover) nor her songwriting betrays an ounce of fat. Hearkening back to the Depression-era South of photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, her debut paints spare portraits of an aging moonshiner consumed by his own brew and a pilgrim orphan girl traveling lonely down God's highway. Except for the noise on a souped-up car song, producer T-Bone Burnett keeps the mainly acoustic back-up sparse in order to not overpower Welch's quiet, twangy country-blues soprano.

Berklee alumna Welch grew up in LA, where her parents composed for The Carol Burnett Show, but her artistic roots are in the outposts of Appalachia, in the chilling counterpoint harmonies of the Stanley Brothers -- harmonies she and lanky guitarist/co-author Dave Rawlings recall with eerie purity. As with Wayne Hancock and Iris DeMent, you'd think her ears were utterly innocent of decades of country schlock.

-- Bruce Sylvester

(Gillian Welch plays the Paradise on Wednesday, May 8.)

*** Gillian Welch

REVIVAL

(Almo Sounds/Geffen)