One of the great moments in Malcolm Gladwell's less-than-great Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking involves the elaborate forgery of an ancient Greek statue, the authenticity of which was confirmed by several scientific tests and denied outright and immediately by three art historians. The point Gladwell uses the anecdote to make is that oftentimes an expert's human hunch can trump the analyst's cold calculus. The point I'd like to make with the story is that the reason the statue befuddled those who studied it was that the form was right, but not the essence. Early Christian theologians made use of a similar distinction when they repurposed the Aristotelian taxonomy of matter to explain the mystery of transubstantiation. They argued that the characteristics of a thing (looking, feeling, tasting like bread) are quite separate from that essential quality that makes it what it is (the body of Jesus). All of this is my admittedly circuitous way of saying that Gillian Welch nearly had me fooled with the songs she wrote and performed on Revival. They sound in so many ways just like the old-timey material of the 1920s and 30s with which she is so thoroughly engrossed. The close harmonies, the mono recordings, the hard-luck tales of orphans, factory girls, moonshiners - if you didn't know better, you'd swear she had uncovered some dusty trunk of songs in Joe Bussard's basement. It seemed like Welch had figured out a way to contact the spirits of another time and place. And, to crib a line from Scooby-Doo, "she would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for this meddling listener." Everything seemed first-rate and pitch perfect until the sixth track, "By the Mark." I had been anticipating this song as it approached, hoping the title might be an allusion to Samuel Clemens. In it she sings, "When I cross over / I will shout and sing / I will know my savior / by the mark where the nails have been." Now, on the surface, this is the type of rustic gospel tune you might expect to hear from a Carter Family acolyte. It's got that reward-in-heaven theme, that humble evocation of Jesus' bodily suffering on the cross. You know, that good, ol'-fashioned blood of the lamb stuff. The only problem is the concept. As any holy-rollin', God-fearin', Bible-thumpin' Christian (or, in my case, 20-year veteran of Catholic schools) can tell you, it's highly unlikely that someone very familiar with the New Testament would say, "I will know my savior by the mark where the nails have been." To do so is a little too like calling oneself a "doubting Thomas," the pejorative term that refers to the apostle who insisted on confirming the identity of the risen Christ by feeling his wounds. This is also why you don't hear a lot of gospel songs that talk about "kissing Jesus," for fear of being associated with that most notorious of kiss-and-tellers: Judas, the betrayer. Am I being too picky? Probably. But I also think it's likely that Welch, who grew up in a secular household in New York and L.A., is more inspired by gospel music than she is by the religious feelings that produce it. Of course, none of this is to suggest she meant to perpetrate fraud or pass off her songs as anything other than a sincere homage to the Appalachian folk that so moves her. At Boston University I had the pleasure of working for, taking classes with, and attending lectures by the incandescently brilliant literary critic Christoper Ricks. In a lecture on "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," much of which appears in his labor of love, Dylan's Vision of Sin, Ricks said there was a big difference between writing a political song and writing a song politically. The former requires little skill or imagination. Mention George W. Bush and you're halfway there. The latter, however, implies an ability to effect a particular response in your audience by the manner in which you write the song itself. I think the same goes for religious music, which is why "By the Mark" misses its mark. Welch has mastered the form. Now all she needs is the essence. Grade: B+
