Diana Jones
Album: Museum Of Appalachia Recordings
Label: Proper
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.dianajonesmusic.com

Yeah, the Museum Of Appalachia does exist - and this album does actually present recordings made at that venue (only last year, too). The back-story is that, following the instinctive premise that "songs tell us how they need to be arranged and recorded if we listen", Nashville singer-songwriter Diana picked up a bunch of her own songs that were "just waiting patiently for a quiet room with old-time musicians to let their simplicity shine in real time", and headed off to the wholly conducive, crackling-log-fire environment of the Museum to get them recorded for posterity, with three trusty instrumentalists (Matt Combs, Shad Cobb and Joe DeJarnette) and two backing vocalists (Laurelyn Dossett and John Lilly) in tow. Never has the combination of fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar and bass sounded so persuasive, I wager, than here backing Diana's charismatic, authentic singing voice on this all-too-brief collection of original mountain ballads and gospel-style songs and heartbreakers on the theme of hardship that sound for all the world like they'd stepped straight out of old-time tradition.

Diana covers her chosen ground economically and with all due feel for the traditions which have inspired her writing, on a healthy bunch of songs which could easily have been unearthed from the Museum's own archive and yet retain that vital element of freshness in discovery. The collection is bookended by the sanctified: O Sinner makes for a rousing start, while the altogether more soft-edged a cappella of The Other Side sends us up to heaven at the close of the disc. In between, we explore the rationale for the day of rest on Song For A Worker, experience first-hand the mournful waltzing heartache of Tennessee and the all too typical folk-tale of Sparrow, via a lively portrait of Drunkard's Daughter, the plaintive Gold Mine, a suitably melancholy lament (Ohio), the Carter-esque homily Orphan's Home and the immediately memorable Love O Love (probably my favourite track, and one I've had most on repeat play).

An absolutely lovely album (notwithstanding its not-exactly-cheerful subject-matter), and one that turns out to be entirely beyond criticism.

David Kidman