Album Review- David Olney and Anana Kaye

 I wasn’t familiar with David Olney when he passed in January of last year.

Streaming services and internet certainly help fill out those blanks. I don’t think it’s an insult to say Olney was an under appreciated singer songwriter in a genre full of same.

Olney was a successful songwriter though and his style resembles his friends and peers who sang his songs like Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell- the next generation of Townes Van Zandt influenced writers (Olney and Townes were mutually appreciative), and a ton of their unheralded brethren like Tom Russell and Buddy Miller.

Like so many talented Americana tinged singers, comparisons are hard and don’t do justice, but it is also what we do to get people to listen to unfamiliar music.

John Hiatt is probably a good comparison. Olney released most of his records for Rounder (and its folk imprint Philo) and he’s definitely in line with the roster of Iris DeMint, Bill Morrissey and Ray Wylie Hubbard. I detect a bit of Joe Ely in him too.

A solid back catalog might not have prepared me for Whispers and Sighs as good, even as his recent work was.

Olney sings as if he knows the end is coming on the posthumous 2021 release paired with east European folk singer Anana Kaye. Not that he needed the extra gravitas, but at 71, his voice resembles a latter Leonard Cohen; and he knows it. At time, he leans in for his best Tom Waits. The effect can be other worldly.

Olney seems the focus but even when Kaye takes vocals on her own like the title track or the Franks Wild Yearseque Thank You Note, there is no effect or change in the mood or tune of the album. A mood that is most unlikely a strand of country goth. Even at its most conventional- the mostly Kaye sung songs Why Cant We Get This Right and My Last Dream of You fit into Americana territory with no detour in quality.

Given enough time spent listening, it’s hard not to appreciate it all, but it is certainly Olney’s turns that are the most instantly compelling. My Favorite Goodbye is perfect in near every way- a song that fits comfortably with the likes of Townes, Hiatt and Zevon. Then later comes The World We Used to Know evoking wars past and dialing up the dramatics, Lie to Me Angel which rock and rolls, and the Great Manzini which matches Richard Thompson style lyrics to an ethereal melody.

With credit as well to Richard Dodd (engineer of Tom Petty's Wildflowers and Jimmy Duck Holmes's Cypress Grove, cellist for the Foo Fighters, Iggy Pop and Smashing Pumpkins to name a few. He literally has worked in some capacity with a who’s who of the top country, rock, rap, blues and Christian artists), this is destined to be a cult album with raves from anyone lucky enough to hear it.