Two collaborative efforts are the highlights this week.
“Go Dig My Grave”
Moira Smiley featuring Merrill Garbus
Public Domain
Jonathan Keefe: Smiley’s The Rhizome Project is unlike anything I’ve heard in ages, and “Go Dig My Grave” was perhaps the best example of what she accomplishes with the project. Her gifts for composition– her use of dissonance, in particular– and arrangement place her at the forefront of contemporary musicians; in addition to being a compelling performer and recording artist, she is very much a composer in the classical sense.
What she’s done here, then, is to take a traditional folk tune, covered countless times by artists along the country, folk, and blues spectrum, and arrange it in such a way that I truly felt like I was hearing it for the first time. The tone that she and Garbus bring to the arrangement and their vocal performances is unnerving. The last decade has been a renaissance period for folk horror in cinema– with films like The VVitch, You Won’t Be Alone, and The Devil’s Bath all setting contemporary sources of terror in the injustices and legends of bygone eras.
“Go Dig My Grave” now stands fully as a piece of that folk horror. Thinking of how precarious the social status of women has become in 2024, Smiley’s accomplishment with this single couldn’t be more timely, more apt, or more disturbing. A
Kevin John Coyne: I love the connection that Jonathan makes between the re-emergence of folk horror and the very real, very potent horror of this record. It should feel like something from another time, and it does. It should not feel like something still eerily relevant to our current time, but it does.
Smiley doesn’t sound like she’s singing a song written for the voice of an era long gone by. She sounds like she’s channeling that voice, as if it’s reaching across time to urgently warn us to change course before history fully repeats itself. It stands so fully apart from the usual conventions of recorded music that it feels odd to give it a letter grade. A
“What Kinda Man”
Parker McCollum
Written by Natalie Hemby, Parker McCollum, and Jeremy Spillman
KJC: Here’s where this record should have ended: with a singer like George Strait or Cody Johnson hearing it in the listening room of a Music Row publishing house and deciding to cut it themselves.
Kudos to McCollum for his contributions to writing a solid song and for laying down a blueprint for someone who can sing. I can’t wait to hear that person’s take on it down the road. C
JK: Parker McCollum, a marginal talent with a toxic social media presence, having a banger of a single is basically the, “The worst person you know just made a good point,” meme. This would be even better without the sludgy and pointless guitar noodling that opens the single and, more importantly, with a stronger vocalist than McCollum delivering it.
But goddamn that hook’s kind-of an all-timer: A perfectly turned phrase, expertly structured. B+
“Long Ride Home”
Ghost Hounds featuring Patty Griffin
Written by Patty Griffin
JK: It’s shocking to me how few of Patty Griffin’s album tracks get mined for covers by anyone except The Chicks, and “Long Ride Home” is a sterling example of why more artists should be digging into her catalog. A standout from 1000 Kisses, this song captures Griffin’s unrivaled gift for putting a lifetime’s worth of reflection and regret into a four-minute narrative, and a tip of the hat to Ghost Hounds for having the good taste to cover such an exceptional song.
The arrangement here allows SAVNT’s lead vocal performance to breathe. The prominent fiddle– and Griffin’s harmony vocal– both elevate this rendition, and I love how they pull off an uptempo pace without losing the mournful tone. In a just world, this is a hit at AAA and Americana radio formats, where Ghost Hounds have at least flirted with some of the success their talent deserves. This is their best single to date. A
KJC: I continue to love these amazing young artists who are returning both country and soul to their common roots. With all due respect to the phenomenon that is Natalie Maines, this might be the best that I’ve ever heard a Griffin song sung. Her work has always felt grounded in the activist southern church, and Ghost Hounds bring that subtext to the surface with their stunning performance here. Griffin has never sounded more at home. A
“Friday Night Heartbreaker”
Jon Pardi
Written by Jessi Jo Dillon, Ryan Hurd, Josh Miller, Daniel Ross, and Chris Tompkins
KJC: You know that catchy hillbilly twang moment on David Ball’s “Thinkin’ Problem” that gets stuck in your head? He hits it with the “Yes i ad-MIIIITT!”
Jon Pardi’s entire recording career is like a vinyl record that got stuck on that hook. So relentlessly, tunelessly nasal. That’s already enough of an obstacle to get over.
But then we have the song and the production. It sounds like the soundtrack from an eighties Elm Street kill scene left on the cutting room floor: “Hey, this kid’s thing is line dancing. Make a song we can play at a honky tonk. We need it in three hours. Go!”
Not a moment of this is worth listening to. F
JK: There is a very narrow range of styles in which the pungency of Pardi’s voice actually works, and “Jason Aldean Knock-Off” is well outside of that range. It seemed inevitable that he’d make a heel-turn, and this is smacks of a palpable desperation after the first single for his upcoming project (“Cowboys and Plowboys,” a duet with Luke Bryan) peaked outside the top 25 at radio last year.
I’ve always found his traditionalist bona fides over-sold, and he honestly doesn’t have the chops of someone like Zach Top or Randall King, who have made some legit inroads with the mainstream. So here he is, drenched in flop sweat and trying to sell something that Aldean or Thomas Rhett would’ve passed on.
Every generation gets the Chris Young it deserves, I suppose. D
Pardi’s nasally voice never worked for me either, and neither have most of his songs. Zach Top and Randall King both have better voices AND better songs. (I’d like to also mention Drake Milligan here; even though nay not have had as much success as the other two, he has a killer voice and his 2022 debut album was spectacular.) I had the thought Pardi was this generation’s Brad Paisley with the oversold traditionalist bona fides, but ”this generation’s Chris Young” works as well.
Shame he’s going this route, though. I made it about 40 seconds and thought, ”Mm, nah, that’s more than enough of that.”
…”let’s ruin this (basically good) one!” seems to have been the plan of mr. mccollum and his production team. goal achieved.
you have to hand it to jon pardi, he sounds more exhilarated about his “friday night heartbreaker” than josh turner did about his “firecracker” at the time. besides all the noise there’s some (hidden) catchiness to it. should also work on saturday nights, i guess.
very finely balanced feel-bad drama that “long ride home” – well done.
i need more time and concentration to figure out, whether i dig moira smiley at all or not. not your standard customer.