Darrell Scott - A Crooked Road (disc two)

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Love’s Not Through With Me Yet opens with electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, and electric bass. Darrell Scott comes in with a vocal that it is full voice, and higher in his range than much of what we have heard before. By the chorus, there are drums and organ in the mix. Welcome to disc two of A Crooked Road.

This is the rock album. Granted, much of it would qualify as folk-rock. But this is a different approach to making music than we heard on disc one. Darrell Scott the rock singer doesn’t use the lower end of his range nearly as much, and there isn’t much breathiness in his voice. But he still is a very emotional singer who is never overwhelmed by the fuller and louder arrangements here. Actually, many of the songs are mostly quiet, with brief moments where they swell, but then turn soft again. The dynamic shifts are, in fact, one of the treats of disc two. Oh Sweet Longing is a fine example of this. The song is almost seven minutes long, and the percussion shows up briefly about half way through, and then subsides. The full band only returns at the end of the song, with a rideout that includes an electric guitar solo. All of this serves a lyric of longing, and the dynamic ebb and flow of the song suits the subject beautifully. Only Snow Queen and Drama Lama is an all-out rocker, with drums, bass, and two electric guitars in the classic rock line-up.

The lyrics on disc two are the other major shift. Where disc one’s songs mostly told stories, those on disc two capture a moment in time and take a snapshot of their narrator’s emotional state. Only Snow Queen and Drama Lama tells a story, and where the tales on disc one are more literal, this one is told in metaphor and symbolism. But for the snapshot approach, check out Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. Here, a couple have reached the point where their feelings have been blocked up for some time. The song captures them at the moment where they are breaking up, and their feelings become unblocked in a flood of emotion that comes too late to save the relationship. Everything from the musical setting to Scott’s vocal delivery captures this perfectly, and it’s powerful stuff.

Over the years, I’ve heard many artists who made beautiful mellow music, but who reached a point where they felt, or were told by their record label, that they had to beef up their sound, and it just didn’t work. Likewise, there are rock artists who have embarrassed themselves in search of a softer sound. On A Crooked Road, Darrell Scott has complete artistic control, and he shows himself to be the rare artist who can do mellow and rocking equally well. That he does this as both a writer and a performer is even more remarkable. And if the listener is only in the mood for one style or the other, A Crooked Road gives you the choice. Just make sure you get to both discs eventually. It’s well worth it.

Darrell Scott: Oh Sweet Longing

Darrell Scott - A Crooked Road (disc one)

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Last week, there was no album review, and instead, there were two For a Song posts. Darrell Scott’s new one, A Crooked Road, is the album I wanted to review. A Crooked Road is a two disc set with almost an hour and a half of music, and it was impossible for me to find the time to listen to the whole thing on Halloween weekend, which is always a busy time in my house. Finally, late last week, I found the time. And I discovered that each of the two discs in A Crooked Road has a distinct character to it. Roughly speaking, disc one is the folk album and disc two is the rock album. That’s an oversimplification, but the point is, I decided to review each disc separately. So here is my review of disc one, and the next post will be disc two. This week, then, there will be no For a Song post. It is my policy to post two songs from each album I review, so the review of each disc will only have one song each.

Each disc of A Crooked Road contains ten songs, including two brief instrumentals. The songs on disc one feature either acoustic guitar or piano in the arrangements, with other instruments supporting them. The credits on the album don’t identify the other instruments, indicating only that all songs are “performed” by Darrell Scott. That might mean that Scott plays all of the instruments, but I’m pretty sure that I hear female background vocals in at least a couple of places, so perhaps there are other musicians on the album as well. On disc one, there are drums and electric bass in a couple of places, but also banjo and mandolin. A couple of songs have what I believe is an accordion, but it is played in an unusual way, using mostly the lower keys to set up a bass drone. Only one song, Take Me Back to Yesterday, uses no acoustic instruments that I could tell. This song comes in the middle of disc one, and breaks the mood to powerful effect. The electric instruments are played in what I would call an acoustic way, with minimal distortion, and no screaming lead lines.

Darrell Scott proves himself to be a flexible singer. He often uses the low end of his baritone range, and goes for a breathy sound. But he knows how and when to use a fuller voice, and when to sing higher in his range, and this allows him to be a very expressive singer without ever getting strident.

I reviewed Scott‘s last album, Modern Hymns, and that was an album of covers, and my introduction to his work. So A Crooked Road is my introduction to Scott’s songwriting. All of the songs on both discs are originals, including three cowrites. On disc one, Scott proves himself to a wonderful storyteller. The title track opens A Crooked Road. Each verse and chorus of the song includes slight changes in the lyrics from the verse and chorus before. Scott uses this technique to trace the arc of a relationship, from first meeting to old age. It works beautifully. Elsewhere, Scott uses more conventional lyrical structures, but the storytelling works just as well. As a father myself, I was particularly moved by A Father’s Song. The father in this case is a touring musician who must find the balance between his career and his desire to be with his children. Candles in the Rain (Childless Mothers) is a cowrite with Suzy Ragsdale, and seems to be told from a woman’s point of view. Scott gives a wonderful performance here that really brings his narrator to life. For Suzanne, the song I decided to feature, is a song that Scott wrote by himself, and it starts from an amazing concept: what would happen if Scott met the Suzanne that Leonard Cohen and other songwriters have written about? Scott describes a brief passionate affair that leaves him concerned about her, and still very much in love. He introduces the song by letting us know that sees her differently than others have, and his words bear that out. This is the song, for me, that shows Darrell Scott to be a songwriter with a wonderful imagination. The arrangements is simple, with mostly just guitar and accordion, and it too is perfect.

Disc one of A Crooked Road could easily stand on its own, and it’s a wonderful album. I’ll have my review of disc two later this week. Stay tuned.

Darrell Scott: For Suzanne

Darrell Scott - Modern Hymns

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I’m a little late with this one; it came out last summer. So I justify reviewing now for two reasons: first, this blog did not exist when the album was released; and second, because , if you weren’t aware of the album from when it was released, I need to fix that.

Darrell Scott has written a number of songs that were country hits for other artists. With Modern Hymns, he has decided to record an album consisting entirely of covers of songs that influenced him. By now, this has been a recipe for a slew of albums, both sublime and mundane. So I wasn’t looking for anything special necessarily, but I was willing to give this a chance.

So I put the album in the player, and the first track, All The Lovely Ladies by Gordon Lightfoot began. I can hear that Darrell Scott is a Nashville writer. The song is pleasant, the arrangement is tasteful and tasty, not overproduced. Scott has a voice that reminds me of Loudon Wainwright, without the whine. I can definitely stand to listen to more of this, to see what else Scott might be up to.

The second track began, and my jaw dropped in amazement. The song is Urge For Going by Joni Mitchell. Mitchell is one of my idols, and you don’t mess with her. In Mitchell’s original, Urge For Going is a slow lament for a departing lover. Darrell Scott renders the song as a bluegrass rave-up, and the emphasis shifts to the power of the urge in the title. And works spectacularly well. It does exactly what a good cover should do; it reveals a level of meaning that was not to be found in the original.

I wondered, while enjoying different flavors of country, whether Scott could do other things. And then I heard James. A cover of Pat Metheny, this was either going to win me over or be the first outright flop on the album. Years ago, I heard the Pat Metheny Group perform this live. Scott has rendered the tune in a style that reminds me somewhat of David Grisman, and gives part of the original guitar part to singer Moira Smiley. Once again, it all works.

So Modern Hymns shows that Darrell Scott has an obvious love for country music, combined with the instincts to avoid its excesses. Scott displays a range that extends well beyond country. And he shows a wonderful imagination in his interpretations.

There is one more jaw-dropper on the album: Joan of Arc, by Leonard Cohen. Cohen originally recorded the song for just acoustic guitar and one voice. Then, on a 1994 live recording, Cohen added a second voice. Done this way, the song is a duet between Joan of Arc, dieing on the stake, and the male voice singing the part of the fire consuming her. Starting from there, Scott adds a third part, a chorus of multitracked angelic voices calling Joan of Arc to Heaven. Scott also fills out the instrumental arrangement, including a string quartet that really works well. This was the only song on the album that thrilled me, without my knowing the original beforehand.

Throughout, the backing musicians are excellent. I was particularly looking forward to hearing the bass playing of Danny Thompson, who first heard in the original lineup of Pentangle. I was not disappointed.

This was the first time I ever heard Darrell Scott. I will look forward to hearing more.

Darrell Scott: Urge For Going

Darrell Scott: Joan of Arc