Willi Carlisle Winged Victory
With reverence and revulsion, Willi Carlisle’s Winged Victory moves to revelry
It takes a certain kind of wondering to start a record with a union hymn and end it with a cowboy song passed on from the penman himself. In a traditional sense, Carlisle wanders, extending the archive of American music. On Winged Victory, he is more than a collector. He is a carnival master cum organizer cum revival preacher carrying a tent big as his heart.
And let me say, it pulses with great songs.
Winged Victory begins with Carlisle picking a banjo and blowing a harmonica on “We Have Fed You All for 1,000 Years.” By the time the needle lifts, Carlisle has taken listeners to three other traditional songs. Plus “The Cottonwood Tree” and its polka reprise, where he squeezes a concertina. And “Sound and Fury,” an a capella number made holy by four-part harmonies.
In case you were wondering, Carlisle will ask and will answer, as he did at a recent show in London. “If you ever think that this is like some kind of Southern Gothic act up here, some dress-up bullshit? One, you’re correct a little bit. But two, we do it with reverence and revulsion from the areas that we’re from.” On “Work is Work,” Carlisle looks out onto the Mississippi River. He considers the waters in the Gulf of Mexico rising. Whether it’s the fire or the flood, revulsion and reverence makes Winged Victory a good soundtrack for these apocalyptic times.
Yes, Carlisle revulses at what diminishes life. On “Wildflower Growing,” he longs to turn away from TV dinners and turfgrass lawns. He seeks after someone to teach him “to know a weed from a chestnut tree.” The wildflowers are wildflowers. Then, they’re the human beings that mass-markets cannot value or desire. But don’t worry, for in Carlisle’s vision, we are becoming “a parking lot of forget-me-nots growing toward the road.” Carlisle looks long to to make a place for those with no place.
From revulsion to reverence, the presence of cover songs and traditional songs unveil the threads sustaining Carlisle’s cockeyed vision. “We Have Fed You All for 1,000 Years” is an International Workers of the World hymn written by an Unknown Proletarian. Its commitments echo again in the title track, where Carlisle takes up the mantle of those who toiled in the forges and factories and fields and sings on behalf of the sanctity of all people. Finally, “Winged Victory” ends with Carlisle shouting, “I sang to the dementia ward and old folks all sang back. I sang to the dementia ward, and the bastards all sang back.” A long way from concert halls and commodification, whoever has sung old songs in a nursing home has seen music uncovering something deep.
Winged Victory is filled with these little apocalypses. Carlisle lifts up the moments that uncover our everlasting humanity in the face of machines paving over unseemly differences for the sake of progress—heavenly or otherwise.
This apocalyptic vision makes crooked the straight. It’s a revelation at its most wondrous on “Big Butt Billy.” This talking blues sees a truck driver awakening while beholding the behind of a non-binary waiter in a Route-66 diner. Here, reverence and revulsion are given over to revelry. Carlisle’s performance is ecstatic. His cadence rises into the one-note breathlessness of a fire-and-brimstone preacher offering “loud and vulpine AWOOGAs.” I want to keep going to “the glory of the great doo wop, doo wop and the candy apple vinyl,” but this is what listening is for.
And you’ve got to listen. The deeper you dig, the more Winged Victory yields wonder surpassing description.
Winged Victory is out one June 27 from Signature Sounds. You can find a copy here. https://www.willicarlisle.com
Enjoy our previous review here: REVIEW: Willi Carlisle “Critterland”
Winged Victory is performed by Willi Carlisle (Concertina, Banjo, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Foot Percussion, Bouzouki, Fiddle, Harmonica and Vocals), Beth Chrisman (Fiddle, Guitar, Vocals), Tony Kamel (Acoustic Guitar, Mandolin, Bouzouki, Vocals), Brennen Leigh (Vocals), Ray Benson (Vocals), Hunter Burgamy (Tenor Banjo, Tenor Guitar), Dees Stribling (Drums), Lindsay Greene (Upright Bass), Tom Crail (Tuba), Lyon Graulty (Clarinet), and Oliver Steck (Accordion, Trombone, Coronet). Willi Carlisle wrote most of the songs on Winged Victory, but in true folk fashion, Carlisle hands down several others. These include “We Have Fed You All for 1,000 Years” (Unknown Proletarian), “Crying These Cocksucking Tears,” (Patrick Haggerty with a third verse by Carlisle), “Beeswing” (Richard Thompson), and “Old Bill Pickett” (Mark Ross).