When listening to “How Can I Keep From Singing,” the first song on Annick Odom’s Linen Of Words, you could be forgiven if you take the album as just another excellent example of traditional Appalachian folk ballads. That’s what this track represents, a song documented as far back as 1868, with some additional verses appended during the 1950s folk revival. Odom presents it a capella, singing lead in her unadorned soprano with high harmonies from Hannah Standiford (a fellow scholar, performer and teacher of the music).
That illusion is quickly put away by the stunningly arranged second song, Odom’s composition “Springtime in the Valley,” another a capella piece sung by Odom and a choir. A love song to the riot of vernal flowers and greenery that’s arranged rather like a setpiece of a Broadway musical. And those, dear reader, are the least unusual treatments of the dozen songs on this quietly amazing disc.
Annick Odom is an artist of multiple talents from West Virginia. On Linen Of Words she combines composition, storytelling, singing and playing (double bass, clarinet, fiddle, acoustic guitar), and has enlisted the talents of more than 20 musicians from jazz, classical, old-time string band, and Sacred Harp communities on a program of traditional and experimental music and spoken word.
Odom’s own songs, which also include “Dolly, It’s Fine,” “Last Week’s Flowers,” and “Amity and Lone Pine” (co-written with Tessa Patterson, who sings harmony) are strong and original examples of modern folk with spare but creative arrangements.
That creativity blooms wilder as things proceed. Electronics add sound effects to the short but impactful “Bell Was a Hired Girl’s Name,” a parody song about a girl who blows the house up, from around the turn of the 20th century. “Bow and Balance” comes from an old Child Ballad called “The Two Sisters,” with its alternating refrains of “Bow down, bow down” and “Bow and balance to me.” This one’s recorded with a full string band, and the second half of the track skips back and forth between a stately waltz and an uptempo jazzy reel and finally devolves into a freely improvized soundscape featuring electronics, stuttering drums and soloist Yuma Uesaka on bass clarinet; it wraps with a powerful sacred harp type choral refrain.
Epistolary songs are well represented. “Last Week’s Flowers” seems to be a letter to a long departed loved one. Two others are actual letters. In “Hello Bill” Odom partly sings and partly speaks the text of an archival letter from a mother to her son during World War II, accompanied by pianos and double bass. And the penultimate track “Taking Elevators” is a self-contained little operetta, a shaggy dog tale told in first person by a rural woman who visits a department store in the big city. The soundscape draws on a collage of instrumental and choral contributions by her collaborators.
My favorite tracks are the last, “Bingham Bailey,” based on the Child Ballad “Sir Lionel” in a beautiful arrangement that includes banjo, clarinet and harmony vocals for a somewhat klezmer feel; and the rollicking children’s play song “Granny, Will Your Dog Bite?”
Spoken word, chamber folk, experimental folk … Linen of Words is a must listen for fans of Anna & Elizabeth, Sam Amidon, Rhiannon Giddens, Aoife O’Donovan and the like. Generously packaged with full liner notes for all of the songs.
(self released, 2026)
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