This Beautiful Hell

The world of Gillian Welch is a far cry from all the cheap glitz and ego-maniacal power mongering of the U.S.A. of Bill Clinton's impeachment, Hollywood and rockets to space. It's the other side of those who coin.

Welch explores the grey, rural underbelly and she lives and breathes the country blues music she uses to tell her stories. A 'blue-collared' soul sister of Iris Dement and Lucinda Williams, at times her sound could have come straight out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The people of her songs are those of the by-roads and back-lanes that time has forgotten. She's truly Country American but it doesn't take too big a leap of the imagination to jump from there to our own inner-city squalor, when she sings of the man who has lost his woman to heroin on 'My Morphine'.

Welch shrouds modern themes in ingrained old style folk-blues and wraps up her tales in the language of ordinary mythology: the account of an attempted rape by an old hermit on a young girl on 'Caleb Meyer' is a good example. (As it happens, the girl slits his throat before he can complete his violation.)

As always, Welch sings without any over-the-top emoting. This is the deep soil underneath us all, while ghosts populate the background of tunes. 'The Devil Had A Hold Of Me' is a tragically real representation of how a person who is different can believe themselves demonically possessed.

The world of Gillian Welch is one in which poverty, death and loss reign hard - but if you like your music authentic to the bone, Hell Among The Yearlings is just the solace for your lonely soul.