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.

Also, one of our favorite Sundry Folks, Ali Bloxson of Plumb Photography, has this photo shoot special coming May 8 for those of you with Sundry Folkettes.

The complete album of pictures from the first Sundry Folk Festival is accessible in my Facebook profile. Send me a friend request if you’d like to see more of the Sundry Folk pictures.  And don’t forget that our next Sundry Folk Festival will be May 15, 2010, at 7 p.m. Stay posted for details.

This week I will work on posting pictures of the event. Mostly object and chatting pictures. When the music was happening, it was too good to take pictures during, so I didn’t end up with as many musician shots as I wanted at the start. Perhaps I’ll get a photographer for the next. I do want memories, and I sure can’t rely on the old noggin these days as much as I used to. The pipes and chimneys get clogged-y sometimes.

So, stand by, faithful readers. Thanks to all of you who came out to the event. You are now officially Sundry Folks, too, and we look forward to having you back. Remember to mark your calendar for May 15 (the 2nd Quarterly Sundry Folk Festival). –You think that name’s crazy? The August one will be “The One Before the Fourth Slash Back to School Sundry Folk Festival and Race for the Cure Dance Marathon,” so rest assured, it could be worse, my lovelies.

<really solid high five> (except for Ali who doesn’t “do” high fives; she gets a hip bump instead)

Pack one can of soup and all your lovelinesses into the car and c’mon. We’re sitting on go for the show.

More details to come! Stay posted! If you have any questions or would like to help with a future Sundry date, email us at sundryfolks@gmail.com!

Tell your friends, hot and cold.

So, to amuse myself, I googled “Christian arts,” just to see what came up. And, surprisingly, this lovely looking website appeared, dedicated to The National Endowment for the Christian Arts. I thought, wow. Someone’s doing the hard work of getting a conversation going about what it means to make Christian art. 

And, by the way, it doesn’t look like this:

or this…

and this doesn’t count either…

But, the NECA, despite having the appearance of a legit, promising site, is empty. Click on News, and there is no news. Click on Upcoming Events, and there are none. Click on About Us, and nothing appears there either. And, this makes me wonder whether the NECA actually exists, and if they do, what are they doing to further Christian arts?

The Sundry Folk Festival is our small contribution to the local worship arts and our way of celebrating the One who inspired it all.

My favorite aspect of this word’s associations is the adjective form of the word ‘festival,’ which is festal. While this is not a word I could say I comfortably use all the time, I will say that I wish I had more occasions to use it during. The word ‘festal’ means “a festival atmosphere of unrestrained joy.”

And maybe that is why I don’t use the word ‘festal’ often enough. I don’t think I can count the times last year I celebrated in an atmosphere of “unrestrained joy.” And, should you want to, could you even plan it? How do you schedule “unrestrained joy”? I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing you can plan. As soon as you plan it, it’s restrained, am I right?

The best we can hope for is openness. I want Dumbo-sized ears to hear God with, and I want my heart cracked open like an egg on the side of a too-hot skillet. I want vulnerability, for in those times when we’re most vulnerable, we tend to stop talking so much and just listen.

The potential for this kind of openness and, consequently, unrestrained joy seems best captured in Sarah McMillan’s song “Treasure.” The lyrics read,

All that I’ve seen with my eyes

All that I’ve found in my life

It’s you I must possess

I’m craving more time with you

If breaking my heart would do

I’d say break me over and over

again

Through these lyrics, McMillan suggests a sacrifice that we might choose to make for the benefit of drawing nearer to God. It’s in the brokenness that real intimacy with God can be reached.

So, I pray a paradoxical prayer, that our foundations in the word and our focus on Him might grow stronger this year as walls of other kinds are torn down, that this might be a rebuilding phase we’re entering, and that we’ll be open to the necessary reconstruction of ourselves that’s so desperately needed.