This is one of the saddest albums I’ve heard in a long time. The Everybodyfields are mostly Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews, of Johnson City, Tennessee. They wrote the 12 songs on Nothing Is Okay, their third CD. And they’re very sad songs, for the most part. They’re arranged in the form of dialogue, as they take turns singing lead on songs that don’t exactly answer one another, but that add up to a disjointed conversation between two lovers who don’t seem to hear what the other is saying. First him, in his quavering twang that calls to mind Will Oldham; then her with her clear-as-springwater alto. They accompany themselves on acoustic guitars, sometimes strummed, sometimes fingerpicked, and the arrangements are fleshed out by some backing musicians – two Megans, a Josh and a Travis, on electric guitars and lap steel, fiddle, piano, drums and such. The music is folk, and country, and rock, and some blend of all three. What it is, is modern music played in a modern form that is based on traditional music of various kinds.
The strongest tracks are the first and last, both sung by Sam. “Aeroplane” is a rocked-up waltz that starts with just a strummed acoustic, but the lap steel, fiddle, drums and bass have kicked in by the time Sam starts singing, “Time will forget your name / and float away in a poker game / the best you can hope for / is to go in your sleep.” And “Out On The Highway” is a solo acoustic ballad of a Depression-era youth who finds dangerous work out on that road. It seems like it might be bootlegging, but it’s a good stand-in for just how dangerous it can be to be a touring musician.
In between, the songs go back and forth from him to her, in recriminations that get more bitter with each iteration. The song lyrics are even written in different hands in the booklet that comes with the CD, like one of those books that has two stories, each one starting from a different “front” depending on how you hold it. That’s a pretty good metaphor for the way the songs spool out – coming from opposite directions, and never do they meet. Her songs, like “Lonely Anywhere,” “Leaving Today” and “Savior” tell of the misery of being alone, surrounded by other people in love. His detail similarly bleak emotional states, in a more aggressive way. “Don’t Tern (sic) Around” is a compact and mysterious emotional drama that calls to mind old murder ballads. “Birthday” is the bitter lament of one spending that special day alone.
It’s all redeemed by “Out On The Highway” and the jaunty hidden song that follows it after a long pause. The first time I heard it, I had on headphones and was absorbed in doing something else, and when the sound of somebody taking a bite from an apple hit my ears, I turned around to see who was there. It’s a jazzy country song, with a jaunty fiddle solo from Megan Gregory and a guitar line that sounds like a ukulele. It’s called “Workers Playtime,” and according to Wikipedia it is an extended version of the theme song of a radio show of the same name tht was on WQFS, the student station at Guilford College. in Greensboro, North Carolina.
(Ramseur, 2007)
