Some albums take a while to grow on you, and some reach out and grab you from the first note. Take The Air, the debut album by the Portland, Oregon, duo Jenn Rawling & Basho Parks was one of the latter for me. From the opening verse and chorus of the first track “Big Old Lake” I fell in love with this album.
My immediate reaction to a recording usually begins with the overall sound – the singer’s voice, the sense of melody and rhythm, the instruments, and the interaction of all those elements. “Big Old Lake” starts with Parks’s plaintive fiddle and the simplest of accompaniments, guitar, bass fiddle and a brushed snare drum. It’s a sweet and slightly blue-sounding introduction that establishes the song’s melody in a little over a half-minute. Then Rawling starts singing the first verse in her plain but pretty alto that has a slight edge to it and an approach (some slightly flatted notes and a vocal catch in just the right places) that suggests Appalachia, even though she’s a Wisconsin native.
After that, of course, I listen more closely to take in the lyrics. No matter how pretty or compelling a tune is, if it’s accompanied by lyrics that are hateful or dumb or insipid or just somehow don’t quite go with the melody, the song loses me right then. And of course none of those are the case here. This song touches on a universal theme of going home, whether physically or just in the heart and mind. Rawling sings about packing up the car and heading east back to her home in the upper Midwest, Lake Michigan in particular. The last line of the verse leads seamlessly into the chorus as she sings “Big old lake, you been waiting for me to come / Ho-ome, where is it at / I’ve been gone so long / I can’t find my way back.”
The rest of this short, 10-track album is more or less like that: simple, old-time folk music that hits all the right notes. The music is carefully crafted so that its sound reflects the subject of the lyrics. In “Whistle Bird” Rawling whistles and Parks fiddles in a way that suggests the song and flight of a bird.
“Gather It Up” uses the work of a bee as a metaphor for one’s life, holding to you things that are beautiful, and Parks’s intertwined viola and violin lines mimic the bee’s winding flight that always gets to where it’s going in the end. “Lonely Owl” has mariachi horns as accompaniment behind a languid song with beguiling harmonies, and Rawling’s “ooo-oo-ooo”s suggest the owl’s lonely night-time hoots. “Little Swallow” is an old-time shuffling dance with banjo setting the mood and the fiddle line suggesting the swallow’s “dip and spin.” “Wallflowerness” is a lilting waltz with viola and violin again twining around each other and lyrics that suggest a woman’s ambiguity about her new raltionship: “I’m drowning in happiness, I’m wearing all my pretty dresses, but I miss my wallflowerness.”
I’m a sucker for a good sad song, and the final track, “Leavin’ So Soon” is a just that. Rawling accompanies herself on just a flatpicked guitar, with a subtly strummed banjo from Parks, who sings harmony on the chorus. And that chorus brings you up short every time as it ends too soon – which of course mirrors the song’s subject, a relationship that does the same thing.
“Take the air” is a phrase that was used in Victorian times to mean getting outside and going for a walk, and this album is definitely a breath of fresh air. Of course the phrase can also mean to fly, the way a bird takes the air, and this duo’s connection to nature shows up in all kinds of ways in the lyrics and melodies. I hope we’ll be hearing lots more from this talented couple.
(Waterbug, 2012)
