Dec. 23, 2009 - Issue #740: Wyld December

Various artists: The Village

Various artists: The Village
Various artists: The Village {recordings_bands_mg} Various artists: The Village {/recordings_bands_mg}
, Various artists: The Village

Authorship is merely some of the point of these kinds of records, which generally serve as a mixtape declaration of self-congratulatory taste that doubles-down on the references: "Not only do I dig Bob Dylan, I dig Lucinda Williams doing Dylan. Booyah!" This is the kind of facile geekdom that used to belong to genuine music nerds, but thanks to a profuse underbelly market that caters to those seeking a lazy and faked cultural education (Amazon lists, I'm looking at you!), has escaped the lab to hunker down in the general population, lying in wait for opportunities to announce itself at lulls in workplace chatter.

But I suppose our collective fixation with nostalgia and quasi-historical play-acting tells us a lot about who we are right now, and if so, it's doing the job culture's supposed to do, and I should just kick back and appreciate the multiplicity of wet-pantied homages and irony-drenched send-ups.
It's easier to set aside doubts and drift along with the creeping 're-familiaring of everything' when the offerings are as seductive as those that make up The Village: A Celebration of the Music of Greenwich Village. These are, after all, excellent specimens of classic songwriting swaddled in the many graces of established beloveds of folk, alt-country and Americana and their presumed heirs.

Weighing in with Dylan are heavies like Rickie Lee Jones, confident stylist Shelby Lynn and the aforementioned Williams, wielding little but her rough-diamond voice, liquid guitar and a big ol' bag of hurt. The other two Dylanites are Winnipeggers the Duhks, unleashing a slow-crawling, smoky "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" that blossoms into a bluesy rockout, and Rocco DeLuca doing a taut, aching and increasingly desperate "Ballad of Hollis Brown."

Television-soundtrack staple Rachael Yamagata gives Joni Mitchell's über-classic "Both Sides Now" a tipsy wistfulness that prevents it from toppling into maudlin territory—a peril Amos Lee, tackling Fred Neil's aural Hallmark card "Little Bit of Rain" also sidesteps, with a surprisingly lightly textured and earnest take laced with killer organ.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, however, has never been afraid of sentimentality, which she delivers with her usual workmanlike countrified tearjerking loveliness on Eric Andersen's "Violets of Dawn," while Bruce Hornsby, Los Lobos and the anodyne Sixpence None the Richer likewise stick close to their signature sounds.

But who knew that John Oates—the mustachioed half of the '70s/'80s hit-making rocker duo—could be an appealing folkie boasting a Tin Pan Alley-meets-American Ragtime vibe and a ton of pluck on the traditional "He Was A Friend of Mine"?

The crowning achievement, though, lies in the Cowboy Junkies' haunting treatment of Tim Buckley's "Once I Was"—a gut-wrenching piece of vulnerability and recrimination that reveals a bit of why Buckley, in all his beauty and terror, remains a revered figure in songwriting circles.
If The Village falters, it's not the fault of the occupants, but of its disappointingly haphazard arrangement and the unfulfilled promise of its theme—the album ultimately says little of substance about the time and place it claims as its purview. V

Various artists
The Village
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