When an artist spends eight years working on – or at least working towards – a new record, it is easy to expect a certain extravagance: complex arrangements, perhaps; an unusual number of songs; possibly even a challenging new direction. Those who come looking for any of this on Gillian Welch’s fifth album, “The Harrow And The Harvest”, are likely to be disappointed. In fact, Welch and David Rawlings have delivered the exact opposite kind of record: ten simple songs, featuring just the two of them singing and playing guitars, banjo and harmonica, with no great stylistic departures to spook the horses. Eight years passed, it seems, with the duo pathologically refining what they had, rather than elaborating upon it. The result, as a consequence, is an album with ten new songs that in many cases – “Down Along The Dixie Line” and “Silver Dagger”, especially - could be mistaken for standards, so crafted and evolved that they feel like the work of many discreet hands, over decades. The title of “The Harrow And The Harvest” is a metaphor for the record’s lengthy gestation, I think, as well as a manifestation of Welch and Rawlings’ rurally-inclined aesthetic. Check them out on the cover, drawn as almost pagan deities amidst wild symbolism by metal artist John Baizley, a kind of art-deco companion piece to the cover of Joanna Newsom’s “Ys”. If “Soul Journey” and the Dave Rawlings Machine albums suggested Welch was tending more and more towards a full band sound - a full Band sound, even - “The Harrow And The Harvest” strips everything right back (“Hard Times”, mind, has a certain Band-like gait). Fans of “Hell Among The Yearlings” and “Time (The Revelator)”, who treasure Welch and Rawlings unadorned, will be well satisfied here. The austere passion of their voices and the virtuoso elegance of their playing have never sounded stronger, or been recorded with such unforgiving clarity. The comparatively jaunty outlook of “Soul Journey” has been rolled back, too, though some of the gothic extremes of Welch’s earlier work have been replaced by a certain rueful fatalism: three songs here are called “The Way It Will Be”, “The Way It Goes” and “The Way The Whole Thing Ends”. A sultry country torch song called “Dark Turn Of Mind”, meanwhile, highlights the charms of gloom-infatuated women with, surely, a wry self-awareness. Rawlings’ conjoined covers of “Method Acting” (Bright Eyes) and “Cortez The Killer” (Neil Young) on “Friend Of A Friend”, seeming to emerge out of an elevated duo jam, give an indication of how some of these songs sound. “The Way It Goes”, for instance, is a rollicking folk song given extra filigree and nuance by Rawlings dancing around it in a style somewhat reminiscent of Django Reinhardt. Elsewhere, the album stylistically picks up more where “Time (The Revelator)” left off, orbiting somewhere between deep tradition (“Six White Horses” feels like the work of two particularly assiduous scholars of Harry Smith, and would sit neatly next to something by, say, The Black Twig Pickers) and Neil Youngish balladry (“The Way It Will Be”, a song previously known as “Throw Me A Rope” that’s been a highlight of their live shows since 2004). The reference I keep coming back to, though – and I’ve played “The Harrow And The Harvest” about twice as many times as any other record this year – is Richard & Linda Thompson, though it may be down to accidental similarities rather than design. It’s there in the calm forcefulness of Welch’s voice, and the way it cuts through the dazzling invention of Rawlings’ accompaniment, from the start of “Scarlet Town” onwards. “Tennessee”, meanwhile, is one of Welch’s languidly unravelling narratives, which in this case sounds at least a little like the Thompsons working their way through a hitherto undiscovered Townes Van Zandt song. High praise, perhaps, but then Welch and Rawlings have written to my mind some of the best songs of the past decade or so, and “Tennessee” is right up there with “My Morphine”, “Barroom Girls”, “April The 14th”, “I Dream A Highway”, “Caleb Meyer”, “I Made A Lover’s Prayer”… I could go on. The point is, “The Harrow And The Harvest” is one of the least surprising comeback albums in recent memory, and also one of the very, very best. Questions?

In 1995, Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson released a mostly-forgotten album together called "Orange Crate Art", and I found myself in LA interviewing the pair. It was a pretty unusual trip, ending in Wilson’s front room, where he claimed that his secret was “abstaining from orgasm”,performed “Satisfaction” and an updated version of “Surfer Girl” for me on his grand piano, then offered me $100 to get my ropey dictaphone recordings played on the radio. Before that, though, I found myself in a less ostentatious house, one that felt more like the home of an academic than a music legend. Here, Van Dyle Parks spent a good part of the interview guiding me through a pile of art books, enthusing about Franz Bischoff, Alfred R Mitchell, Granville Redmond and other generally obscure painters who, in the early 20th Century, had established a mellow Californian outpost of impressionism. I was thinking about these pictures, and about Parks’ work in general, the other day, playing a new album by a composer and multi-instrumentalist called Robert Stillman. Those Californian artists reflected a strong tendency in Parks himself: a genteel, whimsical, rustic vision of their homeland; a kind of Americana very different to what we normally associate with the word. In this canon of Americana, Stephen Foster (the composer of “Oh Susanna”, among other standards) and Aaron Copeland take greater prominence than Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, and the music works like a soundtrack for uncertain, sepia-tinted memories, where folksong merges into classical forms, rather than hard-edged roots reportage. "Machine’s Song" is, apparently, Robert Stillman’s third album, though I’ve only come across him in passing before, when he played keyboards on Hiss Golden Messenger’s lovely "Root Work" live album. It’s an instrumental album, based on solo shows Stillman played as a one-man band, operating the drums with his feet while he sat at the piano. Not the sort of set-up you’d immediately compare with ornate Parks fantasias like "Song Cycle", but the vibe on Machine’s Song is very similar, a sort of creaky, uncanny music that creates an impressionistic picture of old America. There are affinities with more recent artists, of course: Tom Waits’ sinister carnies, maybe; Mercury Rev, who approached this neighbourhood on parts of "Deserter’s Songs"; Richard Swift’s Tin Pan Alley swagger on "The Novelist". Stillman, though, takes things much further, towards abstraction and the territory of Jim O’Rourke. O’Rourke’s a massive Parks fan, incidentally, and an interview I did with him once degenerated into much justified ranting about Parks’ superiority to Todd Rundgren. Anyhow, Stillman can write grand tunes like “Broadwar”, but he’s also fascinated with noise collages that are, in their way, just as evocative. Bells ring on like old fire engines tearing into the night, while keyboards and horns conjure up the sound of trains rolling across vast expanses. If we normally associate Americana with the stories of outlaw characters – hobos, drifters, whatever - who might be riding the trains, "Machine’s Song", as the title suggests, gives a voice to the trains themselves. “All music and sound composed, performed and recorded by Robert Stillman for Archaic Future,” read the sleevenotes; perhaps we could call it, ‘Avant-Garde Nostalgia’, too?

There is something deeply weird about seeing four people onstage at a Low gig. In recent years, it has often seemed as if Alan Sparhawk, in particular, has sought to transcend or subvert people’s expectations of how Low should sound. Surely, though, filling out the sound with a keyboard player is tantamount to sacrilege? As it turns out, the recruitment of Eric Pollard, who also plays drums alongside Sparhawk and bassist Steve Garrington in Retribution Gospel Choir, mostly works just fine. His keyboard work is largely restricted to discreet drones, barely noticeable. It’s only when he’s not playing – on something as brutal as “Majesty/Magic”, say – that you realise how much of Low’s signature sound depended on space between the notes. Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s great talent, though, has been to slowly modify Low’s signature sound; they have, after all, been adding textures since “Songs For A Dead Pilot”, nearly 15 years ago. Pollard’s most notable innovation, perhaps – besides his aesthetically jarring red spectacles – is his harmonies, which slip in from time to time to flesh out the patented Sparhawk/Parker blend. Again, discretion is key, and Pollard never detracts from the uncanny husband/wife harmonies. On “Something’s Turning Over”, though, his presence crystallises the song’s relationship with the genteel end of the ‘60s folk revival: Low sound, remarkably, like the Peter, Paul & Mary of the apocalypse. This excellent, longish show begins with a set piece display of their new power: a short “Le Noise” squall from Sparhawk, then a hefty version of “Nothing But Heart”, as pummelling as the version on “C’Mon”, even without the assistance of Nels Cline. Not for the last time tonight, the sheer volume of the harmonies is striking, as is the precision with which the quartet play. For much of the gig, Sparhawk gives the compelling impression of a man who can only just hold his Neil Young fantasies in check: on “Witches”, in particular, the tension between Low’s tight structures and his possible heroics seems palpable. After nearly an hour and a half he does crack, more or less, on “Violent Past” and “Breaker”, the latter sounding as much like its Retribution Gospel Choir incarnation as the Low original take. There’s a sense, though, that the band are constantly reworking all their songs: although they play all of “C’Mon”, much of it has evolved – become darker, perhaps – now. “Especially Me”, for instance, has an ominous, thrumming undertow to it which it shares with “Monkey” and “Canada” here. Elsewhere, Parker’s drumkit might not have expanded, but her technique has, so that “You See Everything” has a charming jazz shuffle going on. Always, though, there’s that meticulous and overarching grasp of dynamics, with the core value of the band always visible. Along with “Canada”, the encore features “Two Step”, “Laser Beam” and “That’s How You Sing Amazing Grace”, spare and brilliant reiterations of how the Parker/Sparhawk blend is one of the most distinctive and, to me at least, powerful sounds of the last 20 years. As mentioned relentlessly (cryptically or otherwise) these past few weeks, I’ve been playing the new Gillian Welch album a lot, and it strikes me there are strange congruities between the Low pair and Welch and David Rawlings: all those Neil Young and Richard & Linda Thompson allusions; the intuitive harmonies and a calm musical aesthetic which might tentatively be described as passionate austerity. Whatever, “C’Mon” and “The Harrow And The Harvest” are two of the year’s best, I’d say, and this was a fine show. Anyone else there? SETLIST 1 Nothing But Heart 2 Nightingale 3 You See Everything 4 Monkey 5 Silver Rider 6 Witches 7 Especially 8 $20 9 Pissing 10 Last Snowstorm Of The Year 11 Try To Sleep 12 Done 13 Majesty/Magic 14 Something’s Turning Over 15 California 16 Breaker 17 Violent Past ~ 18 Two Step 19 That’s How You Sing Amazing Grace 20 Canada 21 Laser Beam