{"id":9416,"date":"2017-11-16T22:49:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T22:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=9416"},"modified":"2017-11-16T23:27:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T23:27:17","slug":"shelby-lynne-and-allison-moorer-venture-deep-into-darkness-past-and-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=9416","title":{"rendered":"Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer venture deep into darkness past and coming"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sister singer-songwriters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer have recorded their first duo album, mostly brilliantly realized covers. Photo by Jacob Blickenstaff<\/em><\/p>\n

Album cover courtesy rollingstone.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Album Review<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Shelby Lynne\/Allison Moorer Not Dark Yet<\/em> (Silver Cross)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The lateness of this first, yet seemingly natural, collaboration of sister singer-songwriters carries old, heavy freight. Both witnessed their father kill their mother, then himself, in the backwoods of Alabama. Decades past, finally realized, Not Dark Yet<\/em> reveals both as artists mature enough to transmute tragedy into a deep array of poignant expression. The album cover does depict three figures wholly shrouded in shadow, a teenager and an adolescent frolicking while a third person plays guitar.<\/p>\n

Lynne is a fairly straight country artist and younger sister Allison (the ex-spouse of Steve Earle) is decidedly alt-country. And yet, they avoid the sentimental pitfalls common to country autobiographical song with a brilliant array of covers of other singer-songwriters, save one song by Lynne. The title song, one of Dylan\u2019s best late period creations, clearly encounters trauma\u2019s impact: \u201cFeels like my soul has turned into steel\/I\u2019ve still got the scars the sun didn\u2019t heal.\u201d Yet it has graceful depth, an offhanded philosophic recognition of darkness\u2019s inevitability in life. Here and elsewhere, their voices\u2019 blood-matched closeness plumbs their souls and touches the listener.<\/p>\n

Their oblique approach to their parental loss dwells in their rendering of \u00a0Townes Van Zandt\u2019s chilling \u201cLungs,\u201d uttered from the strangely-elevated viewpoint of a person dying of lung cancer: \u201cJesus was an only son and love his only concept\/strangers cry in foreign tongues and dirty up the doorstep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or perhaps they\u2019re searching for their martyred mother in Jessi Coulter\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Looking for Blue Eyes.\u201d Here their vocal harmonies are soul-straining but wrenchingly radiant, entwining each other like tendrils of a crown of thorns. Or hear the yearning of Jason Isbell\u2019s \u201cThe Color of a Cloudy Day\u201d: \u201cI can never find you in my dreams,\u201d an obsessively repeated refrain. Nirvana’s “Lithium” activates a chemistry that seems to reach into the sisters’ shared historical essence. A forlorn, layered spirituality dwells in this album, an acceptance of the larger mysteries.<\/p>\n

And yet, such fathomless beauty and tenderness carries through their lovely, life-worn voices that one feels them, not merely as orphans, but as women artists who have lived, lost and learned. This is among the year\u2019s most indelible roots music albums.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s an activist statement: They list the\u00a0contact information for the <\/span>National Coalition Against Domestic Violence<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0beneath the inside-cover song titles and credits.<\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

A shorter version of this review was first published in The Shepherd Express<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sister singer-songwriters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer have recorded their first duo album, mostly brilliantly realized covers. Photo by Jacob Blickenstaff Album cover courtesy rollingstone.com Album Review Shelby Lynne\/Allison Moorer Not Dark Yet (Silver Cross) The lateness of this first, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[186,187,292,293,295,294,296,291,256,259],"class_list":["post-9416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-allison-moorer","tag-bob-dylan","tag-jason-isbell","tag-jessi-colter","tag-merle-haggard","tag-nirvana","tag-not-dark-yet","tag-shelby-lynne","tag-steve-earle","tag-townes-van-zandt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-2rS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9416"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9425,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416\/revisions\/9425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}