ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
August 23, 2020
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Generally, an artist will only play a Led Zeppelin cover song if they can shred like Page, howl like Plant or pound like Bonzo. HC McEntire checks none of those boxes, yet few tributes are as creatively reinvented as her take on "Houses Of the Holy". Initially released mere days into this troubling year, it's tacked onto the close of McEntire's second solo CD, Eno Axis, and it's a fitting platform from which to launch our appreciation of the new collection.
HC McEntire debuted her first solo record, Lionheart in 2018, following a trio of projects fronting Mount Moriah. Where her band trailed their muse down an indie folk-rock path, the North Carolina native experimented with country music accents once she was on her own. Songs spoke to her own experience coming of age as a gay woman in the deeply traditional South. Lionheart listeners were rewarded with an often beautiful bouquet of tunes, each petaled with one of the region's most moving and expressive voices.
As her rendition of "Houses Of the Holy" might attest, Eno Axis wanders further afield musically, employing a fuller band including drummer Daniel Faust and bassist Casey Toll, two-thirds of her Mount Moriah collaborators (guitarist Jenks Miller is the sole holdout). Also on board are Nathan Bowles on banjo, Allyn Love on pedal steel, and co-producers Missy Thangs and Luke Norton, who also serves as guitarist. Overall, it's a more guitar-forward arrangement, drawing from a more open and unrestrained sound, less beholden to those country accents.
All those roots-facing instruments remain on "High Rise": Bowles' banjo, Love's pedal steel, McEntire's ingrained twang. Yet here each is in the service of looser, fuller groove that drives the song into a couple extra minutes of bonus noisemaking. She intones: Say you love me like a stereo / Turning all your precious records. The opening chords of "River's Jaw" cast a dark and ominous pall that wouldn't sound inappropriate soundtracking a new season of True Detective. A clicking like the tumbling of riverrocks underlies some beautiful guitar work as the song unspools. Even the lyrics read like an incantation: Gather blessings by the fistful ... Dress the barren fields in dead things.
On Eno Axis, HC McEntire is a poet more than she is a storyteller, best at invoking names and places, conjuring landscapes and running her hands through thick foliage. The artist talks of returning home from an extended tour behind Angel Olsen, retreating to her century-old house on the banks of North Carolina's Eno River. From deep in her place, she broadcasts a report to listeners for whom quarantine has redefined our own relationship to home. The bright, devotional "Hands For the Harvest" features McEntire's enchanting voice accompanied by little besides keyboard and percussion: Early to rise / Start the fire / Till the rows / Pass the tithes ... Her song pulses with the definite rhythm of the days.
Lionheart was a beautiful record, and even as it expands the palette Eno Axis can be no less stunning. Hazy, intoning guitars ring alongside banjo on "Footman's Coat": In a different life / I'd have taken your name / Given you a child / Given everything. An alluring soundscape, "Sunday Morning" folds into "Time, On Fire", one of the album's most direct tracks. Which returns us to "Houses Of the Holy", an overly familiar classic rock trope which McEntire flips until it is almost a bluesy Van Morrison-esque reverie: Can I make your garden grow. Like SG Goodman's revelatory Old Time Feeling, which we heralded in May, Eno Axis works to reanimate the spirit of the South by making music that reaches through and liberates its restrictive traditions.
- Gasoline Lollipops, "Sinnerman" All the Misery Money Can Buy (GasPops, Sep 11)
- Jerry Joseph, "San Acacia" Beautiful Madness (Soundly, 20)
- Ashley Ray, "Slurry" Pauline (Soundly, 20)
- Daniel Donato, "Forgotten Days" Young Man's Country (Cosmic Country, 20)
- Bottle Rockets, "Smokin' 100's Alone" 24 Hours a Day (Atlantic, 97)
- Angel Olsen, "Waving, Smiling" Whole New Mess (Jagjaguwar, Aug 28)
^ HC McEntire, "River's Jaw" Eno Axis (Merge, 20)
- Jeremy Ivey, "Someone Else's Problem" Waiting Out the Storm (Anti, Oct 9) D
- Norfolk & Western, "Border, Oklahoma" Centralia (Selzer, 09)
- Will Johnson, "Trouble" El Capitan (Keeled Scales, 20)
- Jon Snodgrass, "Don't Break Her Heart" Tace (A-F, Oct 9)
- Cut Worms, "Castle In the Clouds" Nobody Lives Here Anymore (Jagjaguwar, Oct 9)
- Lydia Loveless, "Wringer" Daughter (Honey You're Gonna Be Late, Sep 25)
- Marty Stuart, "Whole Lotta Highway" Way Out West (Superlatone, 17)
- Mountain Man, "Boat (Live at St Mark's Cathedral)" Look At Me Don't Look At Me (Mt Man, 20) D
- Elizabeth Cook, "Thick Georgia Woman" Aftermath (Agent Love, Sep 11)
- Chuck Prophet, "High As Johnny Thunders" Land That Time Forgot (Yep Roc, 20)
- Patty Griffin, "Shine a Different Way" Servant Of Love (PGM, 15)
- Old 97s, "Our Year" Twelfth (ATO, 20)
- Cody Canada & the Departed, "Hard As It Seems" single (Underground Sound, 20) D
- Juanita Stein, "Mavericks" Snapshot (Handwritten, Oct 2)
- Bill Callahan, "Breakfast" Gold Record (Drag City, Sep 4)
- Whitney, "Rainbows & Ridges" Candid (Secretly Canadian, 20)
- Bonnie Whitmore, "Last Will & Testament" Last Will & Testament (Starlet & Dog, Oct 2)
- Colter Wall, "High & Mighty" Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs (La Honda, Aug 28)
- Justin Townes Earle, "Christchurch Woman" Harlem River Blues (Bloodshot, 10)
- Molly Tuttle, "She's a Rainbow" ... but i'd rather be with you (Compass, Aug 28)
- Matthew Ryan, "Rivers" single (Hearts & Smarts, 20) D
- Kathleen Edwards, "Who Rescued Who" Total Freedom (Dualtone, 20)
- Simon Joyner, "I'm Feeling It Today" Step Into the Earthquake (Shrimper, 17)
This week's new stuff added to A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster includes a second collaboration between Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon. Noon will land on Friday via ATO Records. You'll also want to check out Josh Ritter's new EP, See Here I Have Built You a Mansion. That 8-cut record will also be issued on August 28, on Ritter's own Pytheas label. On November 6, you can pick up the latest full-length project from Canadian songwriter Donovan Woods. Without People arrives via the Meant Well label. Your weekly ROUTES-cast:
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