kate campbell: save the day

On this, her twelfth studio album, Kate Campbell synthesises the myriad Southern music traditions that she’s explored since her 1995 debut Songs From The Levee, blending elements of gospel, R&B, country, folk, rock and pop. The stylistic eclecticism of Save The Day contrasts sharply with the pared-down aesthetic of Campbell’s last album, the self-produced For The Living Of These Days, which featured Campbell and venerable keyboardist Spooner Oldham alone, creating a hushed and intimate atmosphere across fourteen spiritually-minded songs, from Baptist hymns through Woody Guthrie to Campbell originals. Produced by Campbell’s longtime collaborator Walt Aldridge, Save The Day, in contrast, boasts all-new material, a full band, some high-profile duet partners, and, overall, a much more accessible mainstream sound. The result is another highly appealing collection of songs that finds the prolific and underrated Campbell in fine creative fettle.

Unlike Lucinda Williams, whose recent work has tended to trade Southern specificity for broader brushstrokes, Campbell has stayed true to the ethos of Southern storytelling; the best songs on Save The Day are grounded in local detail and draw from both literary and historical narratives. Like all the best country artists, Campbell is also able to wax philosophical with the lightest touch, as evident on the opening title track which perceptively addresses the relativity of human wants and needs (”a big mansion in the Hamptons or a warm place to sleep tonight”) within an irredeemably catchy melody. Carl Jones’s banjo and Campbell’s warmest vocal then lend tenderness to the elegiac ‘Welcome To Ray’, a poignant portrait of a derelict town, while ‘Fordlandia’, a delightful duet with Nanci Griffith, continues Campbell’s fascination with maverick historical figures, addressing (and slyly rehabilitating) Henry Ford’s ill-fated attempt at building a tyre factory in the Amazon. The second duet is another of the album’s highlights. Performing a similar role to Guy Clark on ‘Pans Of Biscuits’ from Campbell’s 2005 masterpiece Blues & Lamentations, a fabulously gruff John Prine beautifully offsets Campbell’s honeyed sweetness on the lovely, witty ‘Looking For Jesus’.

There’s usually a spiritual dimension to a Campbell album and ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’, a standout track from For The Living of These Days, makes a surprise but welcome reappearance, successfully transformed from interiorised entreaty to gospel anthem. A song linking Jesus and Elvis may sound like a grisly proposition but Campbell pulls it off elegantly on ‘Everybody Knows Elvis’, using her two icons to construct a touching disquisition on the ultimate unknowability of another’s suffering. Elsewhere, Campbell continues to profitably mine literary sources for inspiration. Deftly avoiding getting too slushy via a sparse arrangement, the ineffably touching ‘More Than One More Day’ takes its title from a line in Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’, ‘Falling Out Of Heaven’ quotes Langston Hughes, and the soulful closer ‘Sorrowfree’ (with Oldham on piano) draws from Harper Lee. While there are a couple of weaker moments here – ‘Back To The Moon’ and ‘Shining Like The Sun’, though charming, are not quite worthy of her songwriting talents – overall Save The Day boasts more than enough memorable material to make it another warm, wise and compelling addition to Campbell’s catalogue.

[Large River; October 20, 2008]

Written by: Alex Ramon

Tags: kate campbell, nanci griffith, save the day

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.