Rachel Harrington - Celilo Falls

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You could be forgiven for thinking that Celilo Falls must be somewhere in the American South. In fact, the falls were once to be found on the Columbia River, dividing the states of Oregon and Washington. In the early 1950s, the Dulles Dam was built on the river, and now those falls are gone. Progress? Perhaps, but something precious was lost, and metaphorically, Rachel Harrington wants us to hear what it was. The songs on this album are Harrington’s idea of what country music was about when it was still country. You will swear that these are traditional tunes, but they are not. Yes, Harrington performs Pretty Saro here, but she has given the song completely new lyrics. Spokane is a cover, but that one was written in Washington state in 2005. The rest of the songs are Harrington originals, but their evocation of the folk music of the American South is uncanny.

Bury Me Close is like a microcosm of how this album works. The song starts with Harrington singing and accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. Her voice is a fine folky alto with a Southern twang in the accent, and just a hint of smoke in the texture of her voice. Her singing is understated, but the emotions of each song come through loud and clear. On guitar, she picks her notes rather than strumming, and she gives herself solid support. You could say that this is all the song needs. But the lyric is very brief, and halfway through the song, Harrington has sung all of the words. At this point, a fiddle enters, and is soon joined by the rest of the band. From there, she sings the entire song again with the full band. So, in the space of one song, there are two arrangements, and each one is just what the song needs. Pretty Saro is done here as an a capella number, and it proves that Harrington can carry a song beautifully with just her voice. But there is a band on this album, and Harrington can add dobro or banjo, fiddle or pedal steel, mandolin, and/or stand-up bass. Here in My Bed has slide guitar, and You Don’t Know has a gentle harmonica part that is a wonder of delicacy. So Harrington sometimes uses all of the band, sometimes only some of it, and sometimes it’s just her and her guitar. In each case, Harrington makes the perfect choice of what the song needs.

Most of the lyrics sound traditional as well. He Started Building My Mansion in Heaven Today expresses a personal relationship between a Christian believer and his savior; the song was inspired by a remark that Harrington’s grandfather made. House of Cards concerns a card game turned sour, and is a wonderfully spare piece of story telling. The lyrics for Pretty Saro are new, as I mentioned, but they sound like a lost version. Only the lyrics of Goodbye Amsterdam sound new to me; here, Harrington describes traveling to old haunts throughout Europe without the company of a former romantic partner, and having to explain where that person is. It’s a beautifully rendered song, full of heartache, but it is the only one that does not sound like an old song. You’ll Do sounds traditional, but it belongs to a different tradition than the rest. This one sounds like a sultry old blues number. Harrington needs to sing this one a little differently than the rest, and she pulls it off beautifully. The album has a number of sad slow songs; You’ll Do provides a little breather, and it helps the whole album work better.

Next time out, maybe Harrington will start from the territory of Goodbye Amsterdam, and do an entire album of more modern-sounding songs. Or maybe she will start from You’ll Do, and do an entire album of jazz and blues flavored numbers. Or maybe she will continue to mine the rich vein of traditional-sounding songs heard here. Whatever she chooses, Celilo Falls proves that the results will be well worth hearing.

Rachel Harrington: You‘ll Do

Rachel Harrington: Bury Me Close

Rachel Harrington - City of Refuge

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Rachel Harrington sings in a beautiful clean soprano voice. She plays guitar and guitjo, and her band includes mandolin, dobro, upright bass, and the wonderful Tim O’Brien on fiddle. I never heard of a guitjo either, but it must be the one that sounds like a banjo. So this must be a bluegrass album, right? Well, no. This is acoustic music, a mix of mostly original material with two traditional tunes and one cover. The band performs as an ensemble, with the bass sometimes helping with a melodic line, and the core band is joined by occasional pedal steel and a clarinet on one tune. Most songs are mid-tempo ballads, with two waltzes mixed in. So call this folk music, if you must have a label, but just make sure you listen.

Tim O’Brien is a very talented fiddler, and he is in high demand on the folk circuit. His presence here is no accident; there is a high level of musicianship on display. Listen to the opening riff in Karen Kane; before the song is over, you are going to hear it played, with variations, by every instrument in the band except the bass. It’s almost like listening to Bach.

Elsewhere, you will hear songs with very few words; Harrington lets the music carry the emotion in quite a few places. It never feels like a slight song has been stretched; the words say all that they must, and the band says the rest. Indeed, Harrington is not one to waste words. Under the Big Top, which closes the album, has only three lines of lyrics, sung twice. And yet, the song makes a strong statement, and it has the longest running time on the album.

It’s certainly true that some, and probably all, of these songs have different protagonists. And yet, City of Refuge, taken as a whole, tells a story. First, we meet two women who seek to break away from their circumstances. There is a statement of faith that something better can be built here on earth. Then the song Truman tells of a man who would not leave his home on Mt St. Helens because it held the memories of his dear departed wife; in the end, he is a ghost still riding on the mountain in his pink Cadillac. Carver is based on the works of Raymond Carver, and is a somewhat ambiguous declaration of love. The next two songs have sparse lyrics, and hint at death to come.

And then there is Ode To Billy Joe. Yes, this is the cover I mentioned earlier. This song has been the subject of great speculation. There are many details missing in the telling of the story. And Harrington chooses to drop two verses. She leaves out the middle verse about the brother. And she drops the final verse, which takes stock of the situation a year later. So the original story is now distilled. And the song, with all its mysteries, becomes the thematic center of the album. For Harrington, there is love, and the risk that goes with it, and there is loss, in the form of death. The details take a variety of forms in these songs, but the process of working through it is what interests her. And that comes through very clearly.

There are two more songs to close the album. There is a reaffirmation of faith, but this time it is faith in a better life in the hereafter. And finally, there is Under the Big Top, which comes across in context as an elegy for the departed.

So this is by no means a feel good album. But it is also not the downer that I may have made it sound like. The album as a whole is a remarkable piece of storytelling, and it leaves the listener feeling the comfort that can come from just the right person in times of stress. Rachel Harrington is that person here.

Rachel Harrington: Karen Kane

Rachel Harrington: Ode to Billy Joe