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Album Details

• Artist: Gillian Welch
• Album: Hell Among The Yearlings
• Label: Almo
• Year of Release: 1998
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2003-03-29

Hell Among The Yearlings may not be as strong an album as Gillian Welch’s debut Revival but it doesn’t lack much. If you are unfamiliar with Gillian you probably haven’t been to too many folk festivals in the last little while. Her and her husband, David Rawlings are regulars at a lot of festivals and rightly so. In actual fact, this should be a Gillian Welch / David Rawlings album because he helped write every song and plays on every track. It was produced by none other than T-Bone Burnett, and it is crisp and clear on all accounts. Gillian really is a revivalist as she reaches into the past to pull out genuine feelings and true roots. When she and David start harmonizing on some of the tracks like “The Devil Had A Hold Of Me� you can almost see ghosts of artists past swirling around the speakers. Gillian seem to have grown up on old material like The Carter Family and tracks that you might find on Smithsonian’s Anthology of American Folk Music. There is no wonder why she was chosen to take part in the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack with her timeless voice. Don’t stop here when you are picking up Gillian Welch material. Go one step further and buy Revival too. They are both essential folk albums.

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