Album Review - Rambles.net

July 8, 2021

Author: Jerome Clark

Below is excerpted from the original article posted at Rambles.net, and follows an album review of Murray McLauchlan’s “Hourglass”

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Unrelated to the above in any way except that he also sounds like a singer-songwriter schooled in folk music, Garrett Wieland is here only because I happen to have been listening to him and McLauchlan around the same time and enjoying them both. I had not heard of him till lately, and frankly he made no particular dent in my skeptical soul before I got around to a second and third listening, at which juncture I started hearing somebody who stylistically tipped the hat at points to Gordon Lightfoot or Townes Van Zandt, though he sounded more distinctive the more I heard. (Still, the guitar strumming that introduces the opening cut, "Resolutions," is pure Lightfoot. So, come to think of it, is the title.) Weiland, however, does have an affectingly imagined tribute to Van Zandt,"To Carry Rain," here, and he is from Texas, next to Nashville the international home of singing-songwriting.

Wieland is an able storyteller -- always preferable to the standard fixation on one's navel, an occupational hazard of the trade -- and sets most of his tales in small-town and rural landscapes, generally in our own time, though at least two ("Devotion" and "Outlaw's Farewell," the latter concerning Billy the Kid) tell tales out of Southwestern history. The arrangements, carried forth with just himself and three other musicians, are exemplary. The melodies don't seem, as they often do elsewhere, to be afterthoughts.

Overall, What Keeps the Heart Afloat is an argument for the virtues of a good ear, a watchful eye, and conscientious craftsmanship. His colleagues in the trade could benefit from Wieland's example.

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This review was originally posted on 7-3-2021 here: https://www.rambles.net/mclauchlan21_wieland21.html