A Review: What Kind of Fool and A Crooked Line by Gileah Taylor
Deidre Price
If you’ve been to a Sundry Folk Festival, you’ve heard the musical stylings (and witty repartee) of the one and only Gileah Taylor. This Tuesday, July 27, 2010, The Love Library released two EPs featuring ten new songs.
If you’ve never listened to Gileah’s music before, you might compare it to She and Him with Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. I used to think of older Gileah work as being like Leigh Nash in Sixpence None the Richer and Over the Rhine, but the range of styles covered on these two EPs is most like what you’d see on a She and Him album with some vintage sounds (“Cheap Paper Phone”), heavy male background vocals added by Producer Allen Salmon (“If You Can’t Tell”), and unpredictable instrument choice—strings, horns, and various percussion instruments make appearances amidst the piano and guitar switch-up leads. Gileah’s vocals are both as adept and accurate as Joy Williams of the Civil Wars, and her writing feels at times like that of Johnny Cash with Christian messages seamlessly incorporated into universal struggles.
If you’ve listened to Gileah over the years as I have, you’ll find that these EPs offer throwbacks to the lullaby sounds of an older time in Songs for Late at Night (“Dear Natalie Kate”); the notions of “a comforting thought” on The Golden Planes where she shows her range with the pop-infused “Be the One” and heavier, ethereal ones (“For Things Beyond”); and the complexity of sound and story like her previous project, Gileah and the Ghost Train.
Conceptually, Gileah has always struck me as focusing on binary oppositions. Perhaps I picked up on this after knowing that she’d read and liked Flannery O’Connor’s stories, and of course, O’Connor readily uses these time and time again, perhaps because they’re so central to the foundation of Christianity. If these EPs were classified as a literary genre, they would be listed under life writing, but the ever-running thematic undercurrent is that constant pull between light and dark, right and wrong, good and bad. And perhaps what I like best about the narrative of the EPs is that neither ends with a deus ex machina moment with a hallelujah chorus. Rather, Gileah leaves the listener with a satisfactorily realistic end: a friend is there, and the consequence of this friendship is that we are not abandoned or alone.
At the last Sundry Folk Festival, Gileah performed “A Crooked Line” solo on guitar. She sang it to Townes Boyd, perhaps our youngest festival attendee (the son of Filmmaker Bala Boyd and Photographer Joni Boyd). He had been an active participant throughout her set, practically cuddling with the edge of the stage and freestyle dancing off to the side when he felt a move coming on. When Gileah sang “A Crooked Line,” she did it as though she were performing for him and only him. She smiled the biggest smile the whole time and had her eyes fixed on little Townes. And that moment made the magic of Gileah click for me.
She is writing about people for people. And these EPs are for you.
What Kind of Fool
1: “I’m All In”
The first track is an upbeat, catchy lead with pop-infused melodies. The lyrics suggest a coming-full-circle for Gileah as she returns to a simple love story and offers a vignette of life. Vocally, this track delivers the trademark Gileah sound, that playful, lullaby tone but with an edge toward the end of the song that leads well into an album full of fresh approaches for the songwriter.
2: “One Good Man”
More than a vignette, this track, similarly catchy with pop influences, offers a full narrative with a moralistic message about sticking with “one good Man.” The song features a spot-on vocal performance by Gileah as she moves effortlessly from a rich alto into her fairytale-ending soprano.
3: “If You Can’t Tell”
This track transitions from light to dark. After opening stark and bare with Gileah on guitar, the song is quickly armed with driving melodies, percussion, and perfectly paired background vocals by Allen Salmon to push the lyric “If you can’t tell who it is who loves you / I can’t open your eyes.” For Gileah and the Ghost Train fans, this is perhaps closest to her last album in its dynamic complexity and carefully crafted heft.
4: “What Kind of Fool”
The echoing depth of “What Kind of Fool” blindsides. An enchanting pairing of simple piano and the faint sounds of percussion in the background meet with Gileah’s vocals, honest and transparent in a way I haven’t heard her record before. The song offers a glimpse at an emotional rawness pushing against brokenness that departs from much of her previous work, and the weight of it comes crashing in with strings. This is what she can do.
5: “Cheap Paper Phone”
This track is the return to the light world, but haunting with memory remnants of where she’s been. The recording feels vintage, as though delivered through the “string and cup phone” she sings about. Reflective and pensive, a lyric asks, “How long until His voice breaks through loud and clear?” The solace comes with the “comforting thought that You are there,” and so the EP ends with the peaceful lullaby of a song with an ending that’s happy enough to be true and real.
A Crooked Line
1: “A River”
This track opens the EP with the piercing sound of “The Emergency” from Gileah and the Ghost Train but quickly moves away from the surreal into the dirt and grit of the real. Gileah piles up visceral images—“my jaw,” “my mouth,” “my heart inside my skin”—to depict a physical struggle remedied only by “the River.” This is one of many tracks where Ava Quigley’s ethereal yet crisp background vocals support Gileah’s artful melodies.
2: “A Crooked Line”
This track is an easy favorite among the new songs. Gileah’s flawlessly smooth vocals paint a picture of a “crooked world” where really good but imperfect people live and love together. The profundity of the message, “Baby, love is defined by the crooked line from your heart to mine,” is hidden in the straight-sung tune. Like most Gileah songs, this track gets even better as it builds with lower piano notes, peppier drum beats, and the treat at the end. It’s vocal dessert.
3: “All of Us”
Haunting and heavy, this song addresses the call to come home and to worship. The complexity of this track is achieved by the layering of instruments and vocals, one onto another onto another until we’re left with the allusion of the resurrection, that final calling, that final home. Perhaps the most powerful and driving of the ten, “All of Us” is the story of conviction, of sorting out callings and fulfilling our purposes and pleasing the One who does the calling.
4: “Prodigal”
The most poetic of the tracks, “Prodigal,” is a lyrical gem. In the spirit of Anne Sexon’s Transformations, a relevant retelling of a fairytale, Gileah puts shades and shadows on the story of the prodigal son. Her vocals and piano have never been prettier. The collision of the message and the medium by the song’s end is moving.
5: “Grief”
Gileah contributes to the organ hymn tradition with this song. A strong end to the EP, this anthem’s pounding piano, electric guitar, and complex harmonies close with a hopeful message that we are not alone, that someone is there to carry us and that joy will come.
Visit www.gileahtaylor.com or www.gileah.com for details on how to get the new EPs.
