ROUTES & BRANCHES 
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
March 10, 2019
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

Kasey Chambers.  Midnight Oil.  Hunters & Collectors.  Crowded House.  It's nearly all I know about Australia.  That, and kangaroos.  I played "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" on the zither at a First Grade concert.  But the internet is wide.  It's wide, wise and generous.  After all, it brought me to Claire Anne Taylor.

From Tasmania, Claire Anne Taylor released All the Words, her debut full-length in January.  Which officially makes me late to her party, but there's a lot of water between Colorado and the Tarkine Rainforest, so ...  If you didn't know otherwise, after hearing Taylor's swampy and soulful songs you might triangulate her sound to somewhere closer to Memphis or Louisiana or maybe Kentucky (Kentucky's so hot these days).  Then you read from her bio:  During her childhood, the Taylor barn was home to a family of Tasmanian Devils, and some say that Taylor developed her unique, raspy singing style from nights spent listening to the devils growling beneath the floorboards.

Taylor cites artists like Van Morrison and Tom Waits as influences, both iconoclasts who navigated by their own unique musical compass.  It could be said that her seemingly idyllic upbringing serves as her foremost inspiration, from her home birth into a large family to padding barefoot through the surrounding forest and hosting visiting musicians.  The original songs on All the Words sound more familiar than exotic, trading in elements of soul, gospel and folk.  Recorded in a wooden barn, backed by a band of fellow Tasmanians, there is a remarkable warmth to the sessions, with Taylor's honeyed rasp pulling it all together.

Claire Anne Taylor's voice should be declared a state treasure, a once-in-a-lifetime instrument capable of great things.  With its organs, horns and skittering drums, "Boogie River" provides the solid bed atop which she works her wonders.  Like Allison Moorer or her sister Shelby Lynne, Taylor wields such a natural, unpolished talent in telling the story of a fire-eyed gypsy with ferns in her hair.  She allows the gospel colors to unspool on the slow-burning "In Your Final Hours", a lovely piece that is both mournful and transcendent.  Woven with little more than a sturdy electric strum and a whispering piano, a backing chorus compliments Taylor's recitation.

A wide-ranging treasure, the CD roams across genres, tempos and emotions.  "Pick Your Bones" is an angry bar band strut about a gritty woman who stands her ground when faced with disrespect at a bar:  She stood over him, looking down / Saying who's the big man now.  With an acoustic strum with touches of fiddle, "The Fire" recalls the family hearth, the heart of our home.  My favorite track, "Drunken Choir", displays the artist at her soulful best, embracing the bluesy grace of Susan Tedeschi and the storytelling strength of Brandi Carlile.  She recalls the sleepy aftermath of another gathering of musical friends:  The hopeless, the unholy, the lost and lonely fool / We found comfort in the sound of our voices ...  

All the Words is never unnecessarily polished, sounding pretty much like a collection recorded amidst the welcoming warmth and comfort of a barn.  Taylor's lyrics favor the personal and the natural, as though she were simply gazing out a window and recording her reflections and her memories.  It's homey but impressive, generating more of a buzz than you might expect from a debut record.  But Claire Anne Taylor is an unpolished gem, the sort of discovery made possible by the 'net.  As her tour carries her further from her beloved home, as her voice is allowed to carry beyond the forest that fostered it, as music lovers trip across her bewitching work, one hopes her spark might just catch fire.  Until then, Taylor seems content to always be returning home to Van Diemen's Land, Where the devils raised me.

- Shovels & Rope, "Mississippi Nuthin'" By Blood  (Dualtone, Apr 12)
^ Claire Anne Taylor, "Drunken Choir" All the Words  (CAT, 19)  D
-  Adam Klein, "Lead Guitar" Low Flyin' Planes  (Broken Hill, 19)
- Caroline Spence, "Who's Gonna Make My Mistakes" Mint Condition  (Rounder, 19)
- Jon Dee Graham, "Big Sweet Life" Summerland  (New West, 99)
- Jason Ringenberg, "Many Happy Hangovers" Stand Tall  (Ringenberg, 19)
- Caleb Elliott, "Old Souls" Forever to Fade  (Single Lock, 19)
- David Huckfelt, "King Whirl" Stranger Angels  (Huckfelt, 19)
- Hiss Golden Messenger, "Everybody Needs Somebody" single  (Merge, 19)  D
- Lucy Rose, "Treat Me Like a Woman" No Words Left  (Arts & Crafts, Mar 22)
- Townes Van Zandt, "Sky Blue" Sky Blue  (TVZ, 19)
- Howe Gelb, "Open Road" Gathered  (Fire, 19)
- Gougers, "Riding in a Lincoln Continental With Sylvia Plath" Long Day for the Weathervane  (Gougers, 07)
- Long Ryders, "The Sound" Psychedelic Country Soul  (Omnivore, 19)
- Meat Puppets, "On" Dusty Notes  (Megaforce, 19)
- Budos Band, "Arcane Rambler" V  (Daptone, Apr 12)
- Seth Walker, "Hard Road" Are You Open  (Royal Potato Family, 19)
- Black Keys, "Lo/Hi" single  (Nonesuch, 19)  D
- Black Pumas, "Fire" single  (ATO, 19)  D
- Amy McCarley, "Never Can Tell" MECO  (Meco, 19)
- Rod Melancon, "Rehabilitation" Pinkville  (Blue Elan, Apr 5)
- Fernando Viciconte, "World From the Inside" True Instigator  (Domingo, 11)
- Ryan Bingham, "Hot House" American Love Song  (Axster Bingham, 19)
- Felice Brothers, "Poor Blind Birds" Undress (Yep Roc, May 3)
- Son Volt, "The Reason" Union  (Transmit Sound, Mar 29)
- Tyler Ramsey, "Firewood" For the Morning  (Fantasy, Apr 5)
- Patty Griffin, "Where I Come From" Patty Griffin  (PGM, 19)
- Emily Scott Robinson, "Ghost in Every Town" Traveling Mercies  (Tone Tree, 19)
- Cat Power, "Cross Bones Style" Moon Pix  (Matador, 98)
- Walt Wilkins & Mystiqueros, "Trains I Missed" Diamonds in the Sun  (Palo Duro, 07)

If there were stores that carried the stuff, new records would appear this week from Patty Griffin and Caleb Elliott (who we reviewed what seems long ago).  It's a great week for posthumous releases, bringing us projects from beyond the grave from Townes Van Zandt and Leo Bud Welch.  Meat Puppets were dead for awhile, but have come back to life with a fun album.  And my ceaseless fascination with Howe Gelb continues, with the release of Gathered.

Goings on at SXSW have curtailed new releases for a bit, though this week we're checking the digital mailbox for deliveries from Over the Rhine.  We'll give Todd Snider another chance, and we've got something from the duo of David Mayfield and Abby Luri, under the moniker of the Cave Twins.

This week's ROUTES-cast features debuts on behalf of both the Black Keys and Black Pumas.  We feature another single from Hiss Golden Messenger, as well as new sounds from forthcoming projects from Felice Brothers, Caroline Spence and Son Volt.