Posted by MattWales

Gillian Welch - The Way The Whole Thing Ends from the album The Harrow & The Harvest (2011 Warner). This beautiful album is full of haunting drama that occurs off-camera. It is the best kind of record: one that lures you in and soothes you with harmonies and banjo, only to leave you wondering what just happened. Ending an eight-year recording break that set in soon after Gillian Welch's profile-boosting appearance in O Brother, Where Art thou?, The Harrow & the Harvest marks a lovely return. The Harrow & the Harvest, her first album in eight long years, is perfectly timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of O Brother and the success of such acts as the Civil Wars and Mumford & Sons, who owe her a considerable debt. Retreating from the full-band sound of 2003's Soul Journey, these new songs are defiantly spare and spectral, featuring mostly the dueling guitars and voices of Welch and longtime partner Dave Rawlings. Their playing sounds tighter and more intuitive than ever, opening up songs like "Down Along the Dixie Line" and "The Way It Will Be" and setting their elegant guitar lines—picked more often than strummed—at eloquently cross purposes. It's a rich portrait, full of unexpected imagery and odd turns of phrase, which means that even though Welch has sung about drunks and prodigals so many times in the past, the songs on The Harrow & The Harvest sound both pleasingly familiar and starkly new, as if her unique vision of Americana contains an inexhaustible cast of eccentrics and an unending narrative from which she can harvest the most harrowing arcs. Lyrics: Say you wanna see my garden And you wanna make it shine Say you wanna see my blue jeans Hanging on your old clothesline Standing in the backdoor crying Now you wanna be my friend That's the way the cornbread crumbles That's the way the whole thing ends Now what's a little baby doing Dressing up in banker's clothes? What's a little sweetheart like you Doing with a bloody nose? Standing in the backdoor crying Now you're gonna need a friend That's the way the cornbread crumbles That's the way the whole thing ends Now once you had a hook and ladder Up into the headless night And once you had a motorcycle But you couldn't ride it right Standing in the doorway crying Now you're gonna need a friend That's the way the cornbread crumbles That's the way the whole thing ends Someone said something one time But Daddy didn't talk too loud People oughta stick together That's the way to make a crowd But here you come alone and crying Now you wanna be my friend That's the way the cornbread crumbles That's the way the whole thing ends Momma's in the beauty parlor And Daddy's in the baseball pool Sister's in the drive-in movie Brother's in the old high school Now here you come alone and crying Once, you know, you were my friend That's the way the cornbread crumbles That's the way the whole thing ends Standing in the backdoor crying Now you wanna be my friend That's the way the cornbread crumbles That's the way the whole things ends