SHE looks and sounds like a refugee from the Great Depression when Dustbowl blues were one of the few comforts of dispossessed people across the US. Gillian Welch, however, is anything but. A child of the LA media set (her parents were a musical team who wrote for the Carol Burnett Show), she - with her partner, David Rawlings - has assumed the role of neo traditionalist, retro rock/bluegrass champion with her debut album, Revival.
It may sound an unlikely conversion from West Coast girl to Hillbilly heartache, but if reports of their live show prove even half correct then the audience at the Da Club in Dublin tonight can expect something very special indeed.
Welch, now 28, was seduced by bluegrass music when she came across it while studying at college. "Every Tuesday night there was a band called the Harmony Girls. When I saw them a light went on and I realised I really liked this music. It suited my playing and singing. I started devouring as much bluegrass as I could." Before that, R.E.M. had loomed large in her life and later when she moved to Boston she would come under the spell of the Pixies and Throwing Muses.
All the time, however, the primitive sound of bluegrass remained close to her heart. When she met Rawlings in Boston they formed a song writing and performing partnership. The immense intimate power of this working relationship can be heard on her darkly impressive debut. T Bone Burnett's sparse production serves to highlight the haunting melodies and the moodfilled lyrics. Their two part harmonies are a joy in itself. Already Emmylou Harris and bluegrass singer Mollie O'Brien have covered the opening track, Orphan Girl, but the other nine tracks display sufficient simple good taste to mark this duo down as exceptional. She may not have lived a desolate life, but she sure knows how to evoke it.
"I'M not straight ahead bluegrass cos I don't play fast enough and it's definitely not folk," says Welch. "It's not country, especially in the mainstream sense of what country is. It's a lot of sensibilities. Someone applied the label of `American primitive' to (American blues/folk musician) John Fahay once. I thought that was a good name for what we do."