I’ve often written before about how press releases can sometimes
\nscare me away from listening to a particular album for a time.
\nGeoff Muldaur’s latest effort,
\nThe Secret Handshake<\/i>, is another example of a disc that fell
\nto pre-listening bias. Reading through the liner notes intrigued me
\nenough, but the press releases – and the album’s own description of
\nitself as “Blues & Gospel” – was enough to push this disc to
\nthe back of the “to be reviewed” pile in the Pierce Memorial
\nArchives.<\/p>\n
When will I learn? It seems the discs I’m the most scared of
\nlistening to turn out to be the better albums. Muldaur is not the
\nstrongest vocalist in the world, but his mastery of the material is
\nmore than enough to power
\nThe Secret Handshake<\/i> to being a great album.<\/p>\n
While one could see religious overtones in some of the songs
\n(“This World Is Not My Home,” “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home”), to
\nclassify this album as gospel is stylistically incorrect. I’d
\nrather classify it as “folk,” just because there are so many other
\ninfluences at work in the music at the same time that the songs
\nthemselves transcend any one strict boundary. (Maybe this is why
\nMuldaur calls the music on this album “American Music” on the back
\nof the CD cover.)<\/p>\n
Granted, it does take some time to really get into this disc –
\noften because Muldaur is not the world’s greatest singer.
\n(Counterpoint: he’s not bad, but you can hear limitations.) Tracks
\nlike “Alberta” and “This World Is Not My Home” seem to stretch on
\nforever – not the best way to start out the disc. (Actually, the
\ndisc’s opening track “The Wild Ox Moan” isn’t bad at all.)<\/p>\n
Things change for the better once you reach “Got To Find Blind
\nLemon – Part One”; this is where the natural folkiness of Muldaur
\nkicks in, and the album becomes much more listenable and fun.
\nThanks to a funky bass line provided by Bill Rich, “Chevrolet \/ Big
\nAlice” seems to fly by, even though it clocks in at well over seven
\nminutes.<\/p>\n
The only other difficult song to get through – at least for me,
\nbecause I’m not an afficionado of banjo music – was “Mistreated
\nMama”. Otherwise, Muldaur and his cast of musicians turn a
\nforgotten form of music (at least forgotten to the MTV generation)
\nand shows just how vital it is to both our past and our
\npresent.<\/p>\n
\nThe Secret Handshake<\/i> is an album that takes some time to
\nwarm up to, but is one that is, for the most part, worth the
\neffort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6518],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-38794","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-geoff-muldaur","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38794"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}