Inspired by new guitars, and with guest spots from Roseanne Cash and more, the US producer-musician contemplates love and mortality on his latest stunning album.
At 76, Joseph Henry “T Bone” Burnett is revered as a godfather of the Americana revival, architect of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and producer of Gillian Welch and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss among many others. The Other Side is his first solo album in almost two decades, a seemingly simple 12-track set that arrived only after Burnett had treated himself to some new guitars. “Every time I picked one up, a song would pour out of it,” he says.
His vocals are husky and downbeat but they hold tension and drama, and come enlivened by the voices of folk duo Lucius and others, with sumptuous guitar playing from old compadres; there are fountains of picking and twanging. He Came Down, a Christian tribute, opens proceedings, after which love and mortality prove dancing partners. A ghostly lover awaits his partner on Waiting for You, while The Town That Time Forgot and Little Darling appear to look back on life together from, well, the other side of the album title. More conventional are breakup songs The Pain of Love and (I’m Gonna Get Over This) Some Day, a duet with Rosanne Cash, with Sometimes I Wonder, a “my time ain’t long” blues.
A crafted, lustrous meditation.