21 November 2008 :: Fortunately, Buckethead.

:: Record Review

Hem

Rabbit Songs
(Waveland Records/Rounder; 2000/2005)

Rating: 89%
Combined Rating: 84%

“What kind of music do you like?”
“Pretty much everything… except country.”

If I had a Willie Nelson album for every time I’d heard that line, I’d be well into his bootleg series by now. Except that Willie doesn’t have a bootleg series because, well, most people don’t like country. Aside from revealing a horrendous level of apathy towards music --- just imagine what the pop charts would look like if people really did like everything --- this statement is impossibly ignorant. The current crop of airbrushed Nashville stars is about as far as you can get from genuine country music, and even the least discerning listener is absolutely right to substitute Lil’ Jon and Gwen Stefani for Kenny Chesney and Shania Twain.

Twain, the once and probably future queen of country, did an interview with Time Magazine in December 2002 that revealed her ambition for Up!, her latest with husband-producer Mutt Lange, to be the best-selling album of all time. The same interview saw Twain putting away personal, emotionally bare compositions in favor of radio-ready singles like “I’m Gonna Getcha Good.” The album also had an extra disc with “pop” versions of its 19 songs --- you know, for the people who don’t like country. But Shania! What about the high, lonesome sound? What about the Carter family? What about Red-Headed Stranger?

Hem’s Rabbit Songs is not the best-selling album of all time. Far from it; the album has been in and out of print so often that I spent a good six months perusing the mighty Amoeba Music store in Hollywood before stumbling upon a new copy, shrink-wrapped in the used bin. The version I picked up was released by Dreamworks Records in 2002, the third edition of the album since Waveland Record’s original 2000 release. This latest reissue on Rounder Records will hopefully make the album as widely and easily available as it deserves to be. Rabbit Songs is no less than absolutely, heartbreakingly gorgeous. It’s everything country as we know it has long since abandoned: the simple poignancy of everyday life, matched with classic American imagery and thoughtful instrumentation.

Songwriter Dan Messé has the rare gift of expressing both childlike innocence and weary maturity with equal degrees of credibility --- and more importantly, the same tear-jerking emotional heft. If country music has devolved into a stew of songs about barbeque sauce and white tee-shirts, Messé draws upon more serious themes. Throughout the album, there’s a sense of tradition, of roots - the storied history of the American West plays a major part here, from hard-drinking men to betting on horse races to the struggle to hold onto a plot of land. The album is no history lesson, though; while firmly entrenched in this background, Messé relies more on memories and feelings than events to tell his stories. Every song contains a sympathetic narrator, and this is the strength of Rabbit Songs; not so much timelessness as the ability to connect one era to another.

Messé formed Hem with producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist Gary Maurer and guitarist/mandolin player Steve Curtis, who both share songwriting duties; all that was needed to record these songs was the muse who would make them come to life. The voice of Rabbit Songs is Sally Ellyson, an unknown who auditioned with a demo tape of a cappella nursery rhymes. A piece of one of these lullabies is the beginning of the album, the traditional “Lord, Blow The Moon Out Please.” Ellyson’s home recording soon gives way to “When I Was Drinking,” and the lush, spacious sound of Hem is established. Her voice, compelling even through a four-track, soars through the ambitious framework of Rabbit Songs, which is built with swelling strings and orchestral flourishes as well as guitars and pedal steel.

For the most part, the album is patient and deliberate, allowing its songs to unfold slowly but surely. “Half Acre” begins with a steady piano pulse and Ellyson’s vocal before the rest of the instruments join in, a lonesome clarinet playing counterpoint to the song’s determined lyrics: “But I am holding half an acre torn from a map of Michigan / I am carrying this scrap of paper that can crack the darkest sky wide open.” If the thought of home can allay one’s fears, it’s the thought of loss that brings them back; after the instrumental “Burying Song,” “Betting On Trains” finds, “The whistle sounding, you are leaving.” Hem finds true love in the beautiful “All That I’m Good For,” when Ellyson’s voice shoots up an octave to repeat, “All that I’m good for is you.” These are just examples; pick any of the album’s fifteen songs (Ellyson’s opener aside) and you’ll find a striking portrait of the human experience.

Ellyson sings without a Southern drawl, and Hem’s chamber music leanings may strike the traditionalist as being too refined. The difference between this album and the glossy pop passing for country in Nashville is that Rabbit Songs is polished with purpose. Rabbit Songs is as authentic as country music gets these days, and it's beautiful. David Greenwald :: 1 June 2005 |                

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