Dulcie Taylor: True love travels on a gravel road…
By David McGee
EDGES OF SILVER
Dulcie Taylor
Mesa/Bluemoon Recordings (2023 release)
The simple truth about Dulcie Taylor is that she is one of the finest Americana-style songwriters of her time. That she doesn’t have a lot of Americana machinery behind her doesn’t disqualify her from the pantheon. Her 2023 EP, Edges of Silver, in fact, only solidifies her standing, as its five songs are typically impeccably crafted and delivered from deep in the heart, and her musical support betrays a complete understanding of the content and context of her songs. This time around, Ms. Taylor is in a reflective mood, more so than in the past, squaring the old accounts with those with whom, as she sings in one of her most affecting new tunes, “we almost got it right.”
‘Back Beat in His Blood,’ Dulcie Taylor, from Edges of Silver
No stranger to heavier sounds, Ms. Taylor opens her song cycle with the hard hitting “Backbeat in the Blood,” with producer George Nauful’s stinging guitar and Kristian Ducharme’s rumbling B3 leading the charge in a lively celebration of someone who’s followed a rhythm-bound life through the late 20th Century with name checks of Dr. Martin Luther King, the frug, the Civil Rights Movement, Marvin Gaye and Aretha along the way. This pounding scene setter then turns elegantly introspective in “We Almost Got It Right,” a chronicle of lessons learned the hard way during a life’s romantic journey, as her delicately finger-picked acoustic guitar sets a somber mood subtly supported by strings, Damon Castillo’s bass and Nauful’s heartbeat of a kick drum. This lament for a stillborn relationship finds Ms. Taylor, in a whispering, wounded voice, accepting her share of responsibility for its demise while admitting, “we didn’t know what we were doing/but God knows we tried/what kept us going for it/was sometimes we almost got it right.”
‘We Almost Got It Right,” Dulcie Taylor, from Edges of Silver
On the mesmerizing side, the slow, shuffling groove of “Soft Place to Fall,” a ballad rich in dreamy atmospherics in the Stevie Nicks style, is positioned as something of a sequel to “We Almost Got It Right,” in which the singer, no longer scarred by love having fled, offers herself as a safe harbor in troubled times. Then the whiplash effect of an otherwise gentle ballad, “Sometimes Love Ain’t Enough,” with a most evocative piano solo by Jason de Couto as Ms. Taylor’s voice darkens and her attitude hardens, becoming more self-lacerating as one searing observation after another lands hard—“I may have hurt you, but I did not desert you”; “I don’t want to hate you/I don’t want to take you/but I don’t want to be the one to cry”; “It’s sad when you know it’s your heart you can’t trust”; “like a fool who will never see the truth, I keep thinking something’s gonna change.” The song cycle closes with “Somewhere Bright,” a return to the hard-edged sound of “Backbeat In His Blood” but turned down a couple of notches in intensity and a bit countrified in affect, the better to stabilize the roller coaster of emotions the previous four songs describe and to wind up in a hopeful place, looking to the natural world for an encouraging sign despite “heavy clouds over us tonight/we look up, searching for the light/edges of silver in the sky/promise the moon is out there somewhere (pause) bright.” The pause says so much, loaded as it is with optimism and ambiguity alike. Nothing is really resolved when the song winds down with the repeated refrain, “Promise the moon is out there somewhere/the moon is out there somewhere…”—pause, and then a soft landing on the word “bright.” It’s not an easy journey, this, tuneful and captivating as its music is, but then, as Elvis once sang, “true love travels on a gravel road.” Whether the challenge is worth it is the lingering question the artist leaves hanging for each one of us to figure out on our own terms, be they ambiguous or (pause) bright.
