Dave Rawlings Machine
Album: Nashville Obsolete
Label: Acony
Tracks: 7
Website: http://www.daverawlingsmachine.com

Long-time touring, recording and writing partner to Gillian Welch, Mr Rawlings took his time - well over a decade, in fact - before releasing a solo CD, 2009's A Friend Of A Friend. Although the album placed no great emphasis on the known quantity of Dave's trademark exquisite and beautifully immaculate guitar picking, this element was nevertheless firmly present throughout, as was the legendary symbiotic teamwork with Gillian Welch, whose backing vocal graced virtually every track.

Rawlings fans will rejoice that this arrangement remains intact for Nashville Obsolete, with the new album gaining greater unity through the fact that this time round all the compositions are Rawlings-Welch co-writes. Interestingly, although five of the disc's seven cuts last over five minutes, there's never a sense of overkill and boredom just doesn't get the chance to set in, most likely because the songs all display the time-honoured economy of expression that characterises classic American roots music, in which idiom David is totally steeped.

He conjures the iconic figures of Woody Guthrie and Neil Young (the latter especially on openers The Weekend and Short Haired Woman Blues), but he's also unafraid to bring in a touch of true southern Gothic (standout cut Bodysnatchers) and playfully references nifty bluegrassy old-time (Candy) and country rockabilly (The Last Pharaoh), the latter pair closest to the familiar Welch & Rawlings styling. Arguably the oddest track is the central 11-minute epic The Trip, which meanders unhurriedly from its semi-spoken opening verse through to the reflective philosophy of its main section that kinda crosses Guthrie and Desire-period Dylan, all set to an almost casually lilting rhythm and coming to rest on a delicate guitar coda. Here most of all do we experience the biting quality of David's singing, weary and reedy almost to an extreme. His distinctive vocal range also embraces a rather creepy dip into falsetto at times, as on Bodysnatchers.

The album was lovingly recorded in Nashville on analog tape, and David enjoys the musical companionship of Gillian Welch (naturally), together with Willie Watson (guitar), Paul Kowert (bass), Brittany Haas (fiddle) and Jordan Tice (mandolin), who flesh out the sound to just the right degree; there's also some slightly ornate string arrangements on three of the tracks. There may only be seven songs here, but all of them linger on in the mind long after playthrough. Nashville Obsolete is a haunting artefact indeed.

David Kidman