If the theme of 2010 was an absolute plethora of inspired albums by people who’d been making them for decades, not a handful of years, you can go ahead and add this one to that pleasant development. (Quoth the Belushi, “Over? Over? It’s not over until when we say it’s over!”) 24 years after his first album with Minneapolis alt-country/roots band The Jayhawks (he made four with them, 1986-1995), nearing 50 and visibly graying, but no longer smarting from his divorce from pretty, vivacious, talented singer/songwriter Victoria Williams (a sad breakup well-chronicled on his last, first solo LP, 2007’s The Salvation Blues ), with whom he recorded seven albums as The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers , he’s still well-straddling his eternal excursions into classic folk, Americana, ‘70s Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter pop, and ‘60s countrified rock. While his Jayhawks work with Gary Louris netted him continuous Gram Parsons comparisons, Olson’s voice was never that rich; in fact he has long resembled the more scratchy/nasally, plain-spoken voice of Parsons’ brief collaborator on Sweethearts of the Rodeo, The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn, and _Many_’s opening track, the wizened yet still optimistic “Little Bird of Freedom” (a thought balloon of the adult ends of ancient adolescent ambition), comes off a little like the post-classic Byrds lineup circa “Chestnut Mare.” On this sweet bit of honey, he duets with the great Jolie Holland (one of modern folk’s strongest female voices), against scratching an itch to wrap his man of the people voice around the ladies (much like the similar John Doe is always searching for his own Emmylou Harris on his own modern solo LPs!). The male/female dynamic often carries on from there with equally dulcet Norwegian singer Ingunn Ringvold , only the remainder of the LP shifts almost exclusively to a rustic ‘30s-‘60s finger-picking homespun folk. The idea of “dusty roads” is a cliché when thinking of this sort of Western-inflected sage-and-his-acoustic stuff, but then again Olson does seem to write modest travelogues of his life, with romance (the aching “No Time to Live Without Her” a particular highlight) being just part of the bigger game. And Olson has never sounded more personal, and more personable than this record after all these years, if for no other reason than it’s his mostly simply conceived and spare in arrangement—although little bits of flavors like some gentle, fragrant, seizing strings on “Beehive” keep the variety coming nonetheless. Here’s to another 24 years. (rykodisc.com)
