They mine melancholia from an open cut reaching deep into their psyche.
Welch’s entrée Scarlet Town – an Appalachian wanderlust requiem – is a salient signpost to despair borne of abandonment.
She lifts the tempo to a jog as she looks back at the scene of the rhyme by a “telescope from hell.” The characters in The Way It Goes resemble old Kentucky refugees from Dylan’s Desolation Row. Dylan name checked Texan outlaw Billy Joe Shaver on I Feel A Change Comin’ On from 2009 disc Together Through Life.
But here the Billy Joe character ends up in the slammer as femme fatales Peggy and Miranda fall victim to drug ODS and sale of a beloved cat.
There’s no permanent relief – just rivers of whiskey anaesthesia – when she rides a freight train south on Down Along The Dixie Line.
BY DAVID DAWSON
