Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nashville’s Woodland Sound Studios has been the seedbed of classic country, rock and soul sessions since the late 1960s. Over the past couple of decades, Woodland has also been a creative hub for its current owners, singer-songwriter/performers Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and their independent label Acony. When a tornado ripped through the building in 2020, the pair found themselves salvaging archive treasures, then recording a folk covers album, the Grammy-winning All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone). Woodland now lends both its name and atmosphere to this collection of original songs. Roots and emotions run deep, from the mellow, wistful melody of “Empty Trainload of Sky” onwards.While this is billed as the pair’s second “duo” album, Welch and Rawlings’ musical partnership goes back a long way and their intimate, unaffected rapport is evident. Their contrasting tones and interlaced guitars heighten the bittersweet reflections of “What We Had”, Rawlings’ earnest high voice sounding fragile alongside Welch’s coolly emphatic lines. The songs are expressive without feeling cluttered or mawkish. On “The Bells and the Birds”, the production is stripped right back to vocals and guitars, with Welch entwining a sense of hope with foreboding: “Listen how the birds sing in the evening . . . Are they rejoicing or are they grieving / What do they say to you, my love?” Russ Pahl adds dreamy pedal steel guitar to several numbers, while Ketch Secor (the frontman of Americana revivalists Old Crow Medicine Show) plays a jaunty fiddle that belies the bleak lyrical imagery of “The Day the Mississippi Died”. That song trawls through bereavement, bitterness and vintage blues before Welch and Rawlings croon together, “I’m thinking that this melody has lasted long enough / The subject’s entertaining, but the rhymes are pretty rough.”Even when the going is heavy, the duo’s sense of humour ensures that the album never drags. On “Hashtag”, Rawlings gives a nod to Covid as well as the ephemeral buzz of internet culture (“Singers like you and I / are only news when we die”). Welch and Rawlings are in their element melding old-timey stylings with modern hooks. Woodland may deal with seismic changes, but it’s ultimately a reunion on beloved home turf.★★★★☆‘Woodland’ is out now on Acony Records
