Gillian Welch: Soul Journey

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Gillian Welch arrived as a fully formed talent in the mid 90s but sounding like she'd come from half a century before as she sang mountain ballads, white gospel stylings and powerful backwoods narratives. Since then she has deepened and darkened her work, and made subtle suggestions she knows something of the contemporary world in which she seemed out of place.

Her fourth album, Soul Journey (Acony), is timely - she features in the currently screening movie-doco Down from the Mountain, the live O Brother Where Art Thou? concert - which might mean she reaches that bigger audience she deserves. Here she broadens her palette and comes on like a slightly more folky Lucinda Williams (Look at Miss Ohio) while still retaining her roots in traditional country (the fiddle-scraped No One Knows My Name, her arrangements of two old-time songs). She also digs in alongside the rock'n'roll troubadour tradition, with longtime songwriting partner David Rawlings penning an instant classic, melancholy love ballad in I Made A Lover's Prayer and goes out with the Dylanesque Wrecking Ball. Music and emotion stripped to their essences.