REVIEW: Hazeldine, Orphans (All Swoll/Morebarn)
- Daniel Aloi
Female singers Shawn Barton, Tonya Lamm and Anne Tkach and guitarist-banjoist Jeffrey Richards of Hazeldine show liberal and adventurous taste on this album of their favorite cover songs. If you expect something PC in regard to the No Depression orientation of the band, then Gram Parsons, the Appalachian folk tradition and John Anderson (via the Mekons) are given their due, but they're alongside covers of Genesis-era Peter Gabriel, Neutral Milk Hotel and Radiohead. And it all sounds great together, befitting the band's punk-to-country roots.
"We've listened to this Radiohead song so many times we thought WE wrote it," they say in the liner notes of "Lucky," one of the darkest dirges covered here - a Sparklehorse song, "Heart of Darkness," is sunny by comparison.
But the other side of the '90s surveyed here isn't down at all - Richards sings on East River Pipe's pop nugget "Here We Go" like he's auditioning for The Apples in Stereo. And some songs move along like The Silos - fitting, since special guest Walter Salas-Humara plays drums and guitar here.
There are enough moods in the 10 songs to take you down and lift you up in the space of half an hour, but the dominant thread running through Orphans is one paralleling the folk tradition, in the sisterly harmonies of the lead singers and mostly acoustic arrangements. It's like a late-night song pull among hip college students, all trying to outdo their peers in their affection for obscurities.
Some of the songs are inspired by other artists' versions - like Hank Cochrane's beautiful lament "It's Only Love," learned off John Doe's first solo album, or "Whiskey In a Jar," first heard as an old Thin Lizzy standby. Hazeldine is a band born to do traditional songs -- particularly "Whiskey In the Jar" and "Mining Camp Blues," opening the album with full harmonies and a shuffle arrangement that's almost upbeat enough to belie the tragedy it relates. They come full circle and pay direct tribute to one of their main influences at the end of the album, with Parsons' "A Song For You."
Orphans is distributed by E-Squared (Steve Earle's label) and available through Miles of Music, its first U.S. release after several months' availability only in Europe. It will be followed by their Polydor debut Digging You Up, also now available as an import only.
For more information, check out http://www.morebarn.com/Hazeldine .
