Mark Olson And The Creekdippers: December's Child

Mark Olson left The Jayhawks when his bandmates' chart-topping ambitions led them toward jangle-pop sheen, and away from the earthy country-rock that first brought them together. Olson retreated into the wilderness with his folk-rock-darling wife Victoria Williams, but over the past five years, he's released periodic dispatches under the name "The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers." His latest album, December's Child, excises the "Original Harmony Ridge" and tacks on Olson's name for a set of songs with a raggedness reminiscent of Neil Young's '70s-era post-Harvest records. With Williams trilling in the background like a latter-day Nicolette Larson (or perhaps like Emmylou Harris to Olson's Gram Parsons), the singer-songwriter opens his doors to the communal everybody-come-over-to-play school of music, which he then populates with characters uncomfortable with their habitat. The songs on December's Child invariably have a rural sound and setting, but Olson's is a new new country, where junkies drive trucks to crystal-meth labs (in the gospel-tinged "Alta's Song"), and the poor and abandoned look upon religion with sarcasm (in the stomping, swaying "Still We Have A Friend In You"). The seven or eight musicians who comprise the Creekdippers on any given track play a relaxed brand of mountain music, which Olson mixes to accentuate distortion and echo, instilling the pretty melodies with a hint of foreboding. Olson follows his own path and sounds happy in his work—the overriding tone of December's Child is one of joyful noisemaking—but even five years after he fled an oppressive creative environment, he can't stop singing about people who aren't where they want to be, physically or spiritually. The old hill folk used to have a name for his kind of gloriously sad music: "high lonesome.