Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine: David Olney: Migration

DAVID OLNEY

Migration

Loud House 2007

Looking for a bright-eyed, effervescent fun album? Look elsewhere! David Olney's songs are literature, telling stories of difficult crossroads where people face difficult decisions. The pictures he paints in word and music are often painful and not often pretty. Even the most "light-hearted" here, "My Lovely Assistant" set to a jaunty circus waltz-time lilt is about a love that ended disastrously. "No One Knows What Love Is" has a sing-along chorus and an unforgettably catchy melody on which it muses love's dark mysteries but the album is always at some degree of brooding, adding to its sense of danger. Chief support players are Mike Fleming on bass, Thomm Juzz on guitars and synthesizer, Deanie Richardson on mandolin and fiddle and Pat McInerney handling percussion. Olney shocks me with his lead guitar prowess on "Speak Memory." Instrumentally the album is ever classy. The arrangements effectively illustrate rather than overwhelm the songs.

"Lenora" in waltz-time is another tragic love story set mostly at sea. The gambling song "Ace of Spade Blues" feels like one of Townes Van Zandt's darker visions while "Birds" invokes Townes' gentler, gorgeously melodic side as it catalogs avifauna.

Anyone interested in the true art of songwriting has an incomplete view without awareness of David Olney's work. His songs rivet you even as they startle and amaze, illuminating and enriching one's life. Migration is very potent stuff from one of our very best artists of song. I just wish lyrics had been included with the packaging.