poppedmusic

Barton Hollow

Released March 5th 2012

Sometimes the reason we’re late with album reviews is because I get so totally and utterly wrapped up in listening to it (ok and singing along) that the last thing I want to do is sit down and deconstruct it. This is 100% the reason for the delay in this review and I feel selfish, I do because it’s an utterly blissful album full of wonderfully modern yet classic Americana.

So, you might be thinking what’s so good about this particular pair? Well we’re talking melodies, song structure, picking, harmonies, lyrics… pretty much everything really. The Civil Wars have the ability to make me stop thinking and just listen. They hit that button inside my head, they switch it off and turn on something in my heart instead. From the first listen of the first track, 20 Years Ago, I was completely in love. I’ve had a week away from the album now and coming back to revisit it feels like I’ve been having some withdrawal. I also can’t listen to it loud enough or in my ears enough. Please tell me there are others out there who want to listen more than with just their ears they want to feel every note and vibration and that’s exactly how I feel when I put this on. I want to contain all of the sounds in my body, consume them, feed off them. It might sound nuts but well it’s the truth and I’m nothing but honest.

You can always tell a bit about a band and their personality when they chose to put a cover of a track on their album, especially when it’s Michael Jackson. Think you’ve heard Billie Jean done to death? Well forget almost all of those other covers (I quite like the Ian Brown one though!), this brings a whole new slant to it. Listen out for the little mistakes, the giggles and you’ll see what I mean about getting a bit of personality. There’s so much serious sentiment on the album that this track kind of grounds it and that’s really needed. Not that there’s at all anything wrong with serious sentiment.

Barton Hollow, we can’t go a review and not mention this track, the title track. It was a single and we have featured it here before. It’s got a real depth and darkness about it. It’s rough and readiness is well produced, it’s smooth without the gloss if that makes sense. The male vocal has a hint of harshness and the female vocal is also a little gravelly. It’s not an album full of this, this is almost the exception to the rule. There’s no softly softly approach here, it is what it is and just like the cover at the end it’s needed to break the album up a little bit.  Poison and Wine is the other possible dark track at least the lyrics are heading that way, the minor notes of the piano, the melancholic melodies and harmonies but it’s still beautiful rather than beautifully gravelly and punchy.

Every track on this album has something beautiful about it, often it’s the way the harmonies work together, those high notes that they hit that almost break my heart. Then comes along an instrumental and I forget that there are no lyrics, that the only thing telling me the tale are the mournful strings the almost  hopeful piano and the pondering protagonist played out by the guitar. At least that’s how the characters play out in my version.There is so much talent with this pair and the album’s been out a month and already I can not wait to see what else they are going to be bringing my way. Barton Hollow is an emotional journey and you’re taken on it without fear or compromise. It feels a very honest album and it’s not always I feel able to say that about music, even if I believe it should always be that way.

Watch the video for Poison And Wine here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6EwdDiopQ