Della Mae – Magic Accident (Compass Records) (13th Floor Album Review)
Are we bluegrass? YES. Folk? YES. Americana? YES. So say Della Mae. What are genres anyway but to box artists in. So here we have Magic Accident, their sixth album, a gorgeous celebration of life underwritten by a plea for a better world.
Della Mae were formed in Boston 17 years ago. Influences? I hear Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, the (formerly Dixie) Chicks and the occasional soaring chords of kd lang. A high energy string band who achieve extraordinary harmonies.
We write about women, advocate for women, believe women, and mentor women. We are 50% queer, and 100% supportive. We believe that representation, queer voices, and allyship are important in music.
Opening and title track Magic Accident is founded on a neat premise: a letter written to one’s future self then a reckoning as to how it’s unfolded: it all means something/ its not just spinning around. Ultimately hope. Just what we need in these times. And a song that both introduces the album and its sounds with banjo (by Alison Brown , producer) , bass (Vicki Vaugn), fiddle and mandolin (founding member Kimber Ludiker) and guitar (Celia Woodmith) sequentially layering into the song. We’re all a magic accident / with a little carbon and gravity. Neat image! I’m just as holy as the great divide / I’m just a small piece / Of the great mystery. I like their theology!
Next track My Own Highway, like much of the album, is more than it seems. On first listen it’s a catchy tune, a familiar trope ( travelling a highway) with great fiddle solos. But within there is nuance: meeting strangers with Something staring back in their eyes / says they don’t believe / How could I be happy / If I haven’t settled down and had the perfect family. An anthem to endorse women travelling their own path and subtly raising the middle finger to that whole trad wife turn in America.
The fast and frantic fiddle-driven Family Tree sees playing this music as in their DNA – as inevitable as another branch on the tree.
The pace pulls back a little on I Compare Everyone To You, a love song replete with delightful imagery that borders on the corny but speaks to a simplicity of intent that lies at the roots of bluegrass.
Nothing At All continues the album’s romantic turn with an achingly beautiful evocation of how the most loving gestures can be the apparently inconsequential. How’s this for a gorgeous image: At the last red light, you put your hand on mine /And keep it there until we hit the dirt road.
Soon they’re back off the dirt road, though, and singing of the necessary politics of these times. On Out Run ‘Em there’s a life lesson carried on the waves of soaring fiddle and plucked banjo: If you go with the crowd, you can’t out run ‘em / Can’t blaze a trail from middle of the pack. Inspiring words from women who know the need to bear witness to a better world.
The price of being true to oneself in these times is addressed in the next track, Lifeline. So prescient to the times: One false move and you’re sitting in jail. Almost camouflaged in gorgeous picking, plucking and in-synch harmonies.
It’s the humanity of the album that is striking. None of the swagger and clichés associated with much contemporary music from the big continent. Instead a recognition of vulnerability, a quest to honour identity and a care for self and others. The track Little Bird speaks to this. On face value an inconsequential song observing a bird in a nest after returning home from touring. A reflection on the migratory life of artists has parallel to the cycles of nature and how a bird can speak to the need to slow down, unpack and appreciate the nest that is home.
As the collection winds up the gorgeous What You’re Looking For strips back all instrumentation and highlights the yearning voice of Celia Woodsmith in a song that almost channels the wistfulness of Patsy Cline or Jim Reeves.
The closing track sees the band putting instruments back in their cases and in pure acapella tapping into elements of the call- and-response tradition brought to the U/S, by African slaves. Here the fraught state of the world is acknowledged – unjust bosses, corrupt lawmaker – but ultimately the refrain it takes all kinds breathes a spirit of compassion – but not acceptance – into the song.
High octane energy, traditional instruments, delicious harmonies, and urgent lyrics – that’s Magic Accident the sixth album by Della Mae. The hope they convey is magic but certainly no accident. Rather, this album speaks to a gritty determination to be true to themselves in these often shallow and dangerous times.
Robin Kearns
Magic Accident is out Friday – Pre-order here
