Willi Carlisle – Critterland (Signature Sounds)
Willi Carlisle has a new an innovative album, Critterland, which was produced by GRAMMY Award-nominated Darrell Scott, and is slated for release Jan. 26 via Signature Sounds.
Throughout the songs on the album, Willi considers the long history of human suffering for its potential to give us cathartic release through song. Quite an undertaking. Along the way he fixes his gaze on the natural world, family guilt, addiction and more, and the result is quite beautiful.
Title track “Critterland” looks to nature and animals for the beauty they show us. “The possum knows his mind more than I do. The sparrow on the wing taught me to fight for you. Take me to Critterland!” Enjoy Willi on the button box on this one.
“Dry County Dust,” playing chickens in the backyard, preserves in mason jars… cats on the windowsill, and again Willi includes more than just the human world in his vivid imagery and his search for forgiveness after disappointing your mother, and others too. “Thank god forgiveness comes in so many shapes… if you get high in Texarkana can you still wake up in grace, that’s mama in the kitchen singing “Sweet By and By.”
“The Arrangement” ponders what happens when you pour your drink out and go on with your life. “The Great Depression” is gentle guitar playing and Willi’s voice taking on tones reminiscent of Burl Ives, in a way, and the chronicling of the desperation of what had to happen in the Great Depression – the traveling to work, the dusty plains, illiteracy, joining the military at 16, and more.
“A Higher Lonesome” features more bluegrassy instrumentation taking turns brightly with harmonica and a fast tempo, in a song about traveling and outrunning addiction as you criss cross the country. “I’ve been called by a higher lonesome than low as low can be, you can write it on my tombstone ‘outlaw life looks pretty wholesome when you pay the price in foolishness it takes to get your free.'”
This album is rich and full with songs from the heart that describe our landscapes, collective history and experiences in easy, pointed fashion. Highly recommended.
Find more information on Willi here: https://www.willicarlisle.com/
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Willi Carlisle “Peculiar, Missouri”
Musicians on this album are Willi on vocals, banjo, harmonica, button- box, flat-picked guitar, fiddle, front-porch banjo; Darrell Scott on guitar, dulcimer, pedal steel, mandolin, lap steel, dulcimer, lap steel, baritone guitar, banjo and piano; Jonathan Yudkin on strings and Jude Brothers on vocals. Thunder and rain on a tin roof were courtesy of Tennessee.