by Kris Wixom

ROUTES & BRANCHES 
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
August 5, 2018
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

The cover of Israel Nash's Lifted looks like a crowded canvas from Howard Finster's folk art.  Or maybe one of those shadow boxes, where seemingly unrelated curios collect to form a personally meaningful tableau.  Fact is, there's a lot going on on his fifth studio record, which is also indicative of what happens when the music starts.

It sounds like a carnival.  A "modern-day hippie spiritual" is what Israel Nash himself calls it.  Following some ambient midway feedback, "Rolling On" erupts gloriously from the speakers, spattering anyone within earshot with colors and sounds and strings and the Aaaaahhhhhs of one-hundred bearded angels.  Phil Spector built his Wall of Sound.  Israel Nash has the psychedelic beaded curtain of Dripping Springs (TX Hill Country, where he's built his Plum Creek Studio).  It's honestly one of the musical year's most beautiful moments, the generous noise almost too much to accept at first.

Alongside producer Ted Young, Nash has created this wonder from that home studio, one I envision without a roof, where the lines between the natural world and a man's musical laboratory are blurred.  "Sweet Springs" is an ode to the idyllic space, delivered in his perfectly fractured Neil Young yawl: Think I'll sit and rest my bones / Low in my evening chair / I'll follow you right into the colors that float in the air.

He's readily acknowledged the inspiration of production-driven projects like Sgt Pepper's and Pet Sounds, little symphonies that incorporate the studio among the instruments.  The video for "Lucky Ones" portrays Nash in a stark white suit, roaming the surrounding wilderness like a lost Alan Lomax.  He holds out a microphone to the mountains and the hills and the trees and rocks, gathering found sounds and literal field recordings that he's hidden in these songs.

Lifted raises us on its inspirational breezes: You are scattered like light from a sunbeam / Piercing the heart of an old dream / That's spinning me out in the open.  It's an album of ambitious contrasts, isolation vs immersion, sinking deep roots in a rural community vs universal awareness.  It's one man's radically individual vision, lovingly pieced together and carried on the wind to the masses.

I've seen videos online of Israel Nash performing a couple of these pieces solo with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, so I know there's a solid song beneath all that noise and glory hallelujah.  Drums and guitar and pedal steel are never far from our ears, especially on "Northwest Stars" or "Lucky Ones".  But when the trumpet and strings sweep into "Looking Glass", it's hard to resist the wave.  Like those curio cabinets, the songs of Lifted are fascinating, inviting the listener to grab the headphones and disappear into them.  But at heart, it's still a man and his guitar, "farm-to-table rock 'n roll".  Like those classic sounds from Brian Wilson, Nash's heart still beats beneath the surface, and the crickets chirp and the wind blows and the thunder rolls.  Everything has a story / All things they must pass / Once it brought me strife and worry / Now at times it makes me laugh ...

- Willy Tea Taylor & River Arkansas, "Lazy Third Eye" Good Damn Dog  (WTT, 18)
- Jason Isbell, "Cumberland Gap (live)" Live From the Ryman  (Southeastern, 18)  D
- Neko Case, "Pitch or Honey" Hell-on  (ATO, 18)
- Phosphorescent, "New Birth in New England" C'est la Vie  (Dead Oceans, 18)  D
- Sons of Bill, "Easier (w/Molly Parden)" Oh God Ma'am  (Gray Fox, 18)
- Blitzen Trapper, "Furr (live at KCRW)"  Furr: 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition  (Sub Pop, 18)
- Cordovas, "This Town's a Drag" That Santa Fe Channel  (ATO, 18)
- Robbie Fulks & Linda Gail Lewis, "Who Cares" Wild Wild Wild  (Bloodshot, 18)
- Amanda Shires, "Break Out the Champagne" To the Sunset  (Silver Knife, 18)
- Pollies, "Hold on My Heart" Transmissions  (This is American Music, 18)
^ Israel Nash, "Sweet Springs" Lifted  (Desert Folklore, 18)
- Tom Freund, "Broke Down Jubilee" East of Lincoln  (Surf Road, 18)
- Son Volt, "Driving the View" Wide Swing Tremolo  (Warner, 98)
- Cody Jinks, "Lifers" Lifers  (Rounder, 18)
- Hawks & Doves, "Bulletproof Hearts" From a White Hotel  (Julian, 18)  D
- Kevin Galloway, "Don't It Feel Good To Smile" The Change  (Nine Mile, 18)
- Kendl Winter, "Stumbler's Business" Stumbler's Business  (Team Love, 18)
- Rhett Miller, "Question" The Believer  (Verve, 06)
- Trampled by Turtles, "Wildflowers" single  (Banjodad, 18)
- Austin Lucas, "Monroe County Nights" Immortal Americans  (Cornelius Chapel, 18)
- Kevin Gordon, "Saint on a Chain" Tilt & Shine  (Crowville Media, 18)  D
- Dolorean, "The Unfazed" The Unfazed  (Partisan, 10)
- Dawn Landes, "Keep on Moving" Meet Me at the River  (Yep Roc, 18)
- Adam's House Cat, "Runaway Train" Town Burned Down  (ATO, 18)  D
- Band of Heathens, "Heaven Help Us All" Message From the People Revisited  (BoH, 18)
- Courtney Marie Andrews, "Irene" Honest Life  (Mama Bird, 16)
- Will Hoge, "Gilded Walls" My American Dream  (Edlo, 18)
- Jamie Lin Wilson, "the Being Gone" Jumping Over Rocks  (JLW, 18)  D
- Noah Gundersen, "Slow Dancer" Carry the Ghost  (Dualtone, 15)
- Over the Rhine, "Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down" Meet Me at the Edge of the World  (Great Speckled Dog, 13)