Ollabelle
One of these days, we’re going to get the knock-you-down-in-your-boots greatness that has been bubbling just below the surface of Ollabelle’s music so far. Their 2004 self-titled debut album was a beautiful collection of reverent yet unique takes on traditional gospel and spirituals. The follow-up, 2006’s Riverside Battle Songs, suffered from lackluster original material, especially compared to their arrangement skills on cover songs.
Perhaps Before This Time, a live album with half the material taken from those first two discs, is something of a holding pattern, but it’s the closest we’ve yet come to capturing the potential of this band. The songs are stretched out, allowed to breathe openly, and they gain devastating power as a result. There are instrumental solos, primarily by keyboardist Glenn Patscha, but it is the union of all five players that makes everything work.
“John The Revelator”, “Soul Of A Man” and “Elijah Rock”, folk spirituals sung respectively by Patscha, Amy Helm and Fiona McBain, are turned into slow, churning explorations of faith and belief with a grounding in physical experience. The Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace”, on the other hand, captures the wistful nostalgia of a world wherein those folk songs took place, showing that heaven can exist in the connection to the past. And “Ain’t No Cane”, normally a mournful, blues-inflected song, is made into a bright acknowledgement of life’s struggle, with especially effective four-part harmony.
The Title track to Before This Time