Mollie O’Brien & Rich Moore - Saints & Sinners

[due out September 14, 2010. Available for preorder here]

Last year, I discovered the music of Mollie O‘Brien and Rich Moore, and their wonderful album 900 Baseline. It was just the two of them on stage, just voice and guitar, and it revealed the work of two very talented and well matched musicians. But what would happen if they went into a studio with fairly large group of other musicians at their disposal? Saints & Sinners is their new album, and it answers that question with glorious results. 900 Baseline revealed a duo with a wonderful feel for the blues, and that is still here. There was also some wonderful folk singing and playing, and that is back as well. But, with a broader sonic pallet at their disposal, and the input of co producers and fellow arrangers Ben Winship and Eric Thorin, the stylistic range opens up. Here are hints of Dixieland and jug band, cabaret and what I would call folkabilly. It could have been a chaotic mess, but O’Brien and Moore and their friends make it all make sense.

I was sold on O’Brien’s singing last time, but here she has a harder task. Of course, a bluesy number like her own New Boots is going to work just fine, and the Dixieland/ jug band approach to Keep It Clean and Everything I’ve Got suit this style as well. Likewise, the more tender folk approach suits Lonely For a While and the title track beautifully. But here also are covers of Richard Thompson, (The Ghost of You Walks), and Tom Waits, (Dead and Lovely). These require another approach entirely. The arrangements lean towards cabaret, but the voice of each songwriter is brilliantly preserved as well. O’Brien needs a little smoke in her voice, as well as a plaintive quality for the Thompson song, and a tone of weary resignation for the Waits. She is more than up to the task.

The other part of this duo is Rich Moore. He is the featured guitar player. Moore is not a flashy player, and he never upstages his singer. Sometimes his parts all but vanish in the arrangements. But his contributions are vital. Like O’Brien, Moore must be a stylistic chameleon here, and he too is more than up to the task. Moore also has a hand in most of the arrangements here, and those are brilliant throughout. A bowed bass turns up in a couple of places, and Think About Your Troubles has a wonderful oboe part. Again, none of this is for show, and it all serves the song. It also makes Saints & Sinners, the album, a rich and fascinating listening experience. I was particularly impressed with Don’t Bother Me. George Harrison wrote the song as a mid-tempo rocker for the Beatles, but here it becomes a ballad, and the lyric reveals a depth that was missing from the original. This also depends on O’Brien’s performance to bring it out, and she succeeds beautifully. At the end of the album, Rich Moore finally gets the spotlight on an instrumental he wrote called Cuba. His playing evokes tenderness and beauty, and for a moment, no words are needed.

So Saints & Sinners is a collection of 11 covers and two originals. There is a fine balance to achieve in covering the works of others. The artists must make the songs their own, or choose to honor the work of the original songwriters. But here is what almost never happens: O’Brien and Moore manage to do both at the same time.

Mollie O‘Brien & Rich Moore: The Ghost of You Walks

Mollie O‘Brien & Rich Moore: Don‘t Bother Me

Mollie O’Brien & Rich Moore - 900 Baseline

[purchase]

Mollie O’Brien is the sister of Tim O’Brien, whose wonderful fiddle playing we heard with my review of Rachel Harrington’s latest album. Mollie and Tim performed as a duo for many years, and made several albums together, before Mollie went solo. Rich Moore is something of a secret. While Mollie O’Brien toured and built her career, husband Moore stayed home and raised the children.

So here are Mollie O’Brien and Rich Moore performing as a duo live, just voice and acoustic guitar. This might sound like a vanity project. One could easily turn away, assuming that, if Moore had any talent, you would have heard of him before now. Don’t make that mistake. With such a spare arrangement, there is no place for either the singer or the guitarist to hide, but none is needed.

This album is actually my introduction to the singing of Mollie O’Brien. I should never have waited so long. O’Brien is a wonderful singer, who is particularly fine with the blues. She can sigh and moan with the best of them, using quiet voicings to convey intensity. But she can also belt out a blues shouter like nobody’s business. She can sometimes combine all of this in a single song. She brings out all of the emotion in a song, without ever going too far. Each song gets just what it needs. Some of her vocal performances here surpass the originals, which is the highest complement I can pay to an album of all covers.

The playing of Rich Moore is a major discovery. He uses a variety of blues styles on an album of ten songs. He supports O’Brien’s vocals with a great sense of rhythm, and he can vary the backing within a song, to enhance the mood shifts in O’Brien’s singing. When he steps out for solos, Moore stays within the context of the song. His solos impress, but they are not showboating. Moore builds his solos on single note runs, with occasional use of two strings at a time, for flavor. Everything else drops out, but he never loses the beat. Then, as he winds up each solo, Moore goes right back to the chording he was using before, and he settles right back into the groove without even a stutter.

900 Baseline is not an album of blues classics. O’Brien and Moore do cover two songs by Memphis Minnie, but they also find blues in the rhythm and blues of Percy Mayfield, in the work of A P Carter of the Carter family, and in a song by Malvina Reynolds. Reynolds’ No Hole in My Head is a standout track, a particularly emotional work on an album full of emotion.

And I am very impressed with the lead track, Looking For Trouble. Steve Goodman is thought of as a humorous songwriter and performer, who also could work wonders with a sensitive folk song like TheDutchman. Fewer people know that Goodman wrote songs that showed his great love of the blues. Goodman’s delivery was such that he could never present himself as a blues singer. So it takes a performance by O’Brien and Moore to show just how great a blues song Looking For Trouble really is.

O’Brien and Moore also want us to know that they can do more than just blues. Lark in the Morning is rendered as the kind of folk music that Joan Baez did early in her career. This is the only song Moore sings on, doing background vocals. Now at Last is a more dramatic type of folk ballad. And the album closes with Somebody Else’s Fire. This is an old Janie Fricke tune, here given an 80’s rock treatment. All of this works just fine, demonstrates O’Brien and Moore’s versatility, and avoids breaking the mood of the album as a whole.

So this album is a new favorite of mine. I have just one complaint. The album has ten songs, and clocks at just under 35 minutes. It is too short! I was definitely left wanting more.

Mollie O‘Brien and Rich Moore: Lark in the Morning

Mollie O‘Brien and Rich Moore: No Hole in My Head