The music of Some Dark Holler sounds like it came out of, well, you know. It’s true Southern Gothic, not some hip put-on. Chris Porter, who writes the songs and plays guitar, sings lead on these songs about modern lives of despair, desperation and the thin remnants of hope. He’s backed on fiddle and harmonies by Helen Gassenheimer, whose crystaline voice is a perfect foil for his gritty drawl. The sound is filled out by acoustic bass and drums and occasional banjo and Dobro, but the focus here is on mood and lyric.
“Purple Hearts” is a simple minor-key shuffle that tells an all-too-common tale in many small towns in the 21st century: young men damaged by war who come home and damage each other. “Pills and Kerosene” is the equally downcast ballad of a woman who cooks meth because she sees no other options. Each rendition of the chorus gets increasingly harrowing as her house and the neighborhood and then the town burn down, whether literally or metaphorically: “Pills and kerosene, a little time and a little heat, puts bread on the table and bread in the bank, there’s no god to damn, no god to thank…”
“Sweet Red Wine” is a tale of love long denied or just plain lost, backed by double-stopped fiddle and primitive stomping percussion. “Nothing haunts a man like time / pass me down that sweet red wine,” Porter rasps. There’s a death ballad, “Abigail,” and a bitter love song in the shape of a country shuffle that quotes from “Wayfaring Stranger” (“Cry For Me”) and “Cottonmouth,” a haunting ballad in first person of a young man who’s seen his granddaddy and his daddy die violent deaths and fears that “the devil’s got his eyes on me.”
Here’s a live video of “Sweet Red Wine” posted by the folks at TIAM.
This EP is no longer available, but you can find some other equally fine recordings, from the website of This Is American Music. [http://thisisamericanmusic.com]
(This Is American Music, 2011)
