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Saturday, June 12, 2004
Folk Music from the Home Front
The best anti-war CD I've heard recently doesn't contain a single piece of hostile rhetoric. Carol Noonan's Somebody's Darling: Songs of War, Loss, and Remembrance, testifies simply about the effect of war on regular people: the girlfriends and wives left behind and the grief of those who have experienced life changing horrors.
The album is an intriguing mix of originals with a selection of well-thought-out contemporary covers and traditional tunes. Most of the originals have to do with the heartbreak of remembrance of those who will never return home. Particularly effective among the originals are "Emma", a song about starcrossed lovers (he's too poor and she's too young) set in the Civil War period, and "Medal of Mine," the story of a soldier and the two women who loved him.
The covers, both contemporary and traditional, are particularly well-chosen. "Tom Traubert's Blues" by Tom Waits and Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" both blend in seamlessly with traditional tunes like "Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier" and "Somebody's Darling".
The last two songs on the album bring it full circle. "In Flanders Fields" is a new setting of the classic poem about the fallen of WWI, tastefully rendered with droning banjo, Hammond organ and Irish whistles, giving it an Irish dirge feel. The album closes with a stunning rendition of "Amazing Grace" with Noonan's voice soaring over simple Hammond organ chords and tasteful pipes that ranks with Judy Collins' famous a capella rendition.
Throughout, the arrangements let the songs breathe and put the focus on Noonan's remarkable voice, one of those voices that makes you stop and say "Who IS that?" Here she sings the songs without ornamentation, tastefully, reverently.
The subtlety of this album is that it deals with the particular by approaching it from the universal. It doesn't talk about this war, it talks about all wars with a very simple message: Good people go and don't come back and they leave empty places of darkness and grief in their place, and if they come back, they come back changed.
I'll let Noonan sum things up with some quotes from the CD insert:"Our country has always been divided about war, but ironically it is the casualties of those wars that unite us. No matter what side you are on, what time in history, or what ocean borders you, the loss is still the same. These songs will make you sad. But these songs will hopefully make you remember...and we need to remember."
"We can start by facing the walls, looking up at the names, and then praying for peace."
Amen.
The album is an intriguing mix of originals with a selection of well-thought-out contemporary covers and traditional tunes. Most of the originals have to do with the heartbreak of remembrance of those who will never return home. Particularly effective among the originals are "Emma", a song about starcrossed lovers (he's too poor and she's too young) set in the Civil War period, and "Medal of Mine," the story of a soldier and the two women who loved him.
The covers, both contemporary and traditional, are particularly well-chosen. "Tom Traubert's Blues" by Tom Waits and Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms" both blend in seamlessly with traditional tunes like "Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier" and "Somebody's Darling".
The last two songs on the album bring it full circle. "In Flanders Fields" is a new setting of the classic poem about the fallen of WWI, tastefully rendered with droning banjo, Hammond organ and Irish whistles, giving it an Irish dirge feel. The album closes with a stunning rendition of "Amazing Grace" with Noonan's voice soaring over simple Hammond organ chords and tasteful pipes that ranks with Judy Collins' famous a capella rendition.
Throughout, the arrangements let the songs breathe and put the focus on Noonan's remarkable voice, one of those voices that makes you stop and say "Who IS that?" Here she sings the songs without ornamentation, tastefully, reverently.
The subtlety of this album is that it deals with the particular by approaching it from the universal. It doesn't talk about this war, it talks about all wars with a very simple message: Good people go and don't come back and they leave empty places of darkness and grief in their place, and if they come back, they come back changed.
I'll let Noonan sum things up with some quotes from the CD insert:"Our country has always been divided about war, but ironically it is the casualties of those wars that unite us. No matter what side you are on, what time in history, or what ocean borders you, the loss is still the same. These songs will make you sad. But these songs will hopefully make you remember...and we need to remember."
"We can start by facing the walls, looking up at the names, and then praying for peace."
Amen.
