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Nov 15, 2018As alluring as his spooky, skeletal arrangements are--steel guitars are used as howling accents, not solos; he occasionally gooses his band to follow a train track rhythm, but is usually content picking out support on his hollow acoustic--it's Wall's concrete sense of time and place that gives Songs of the Plains an unusual resonance.
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Oct 11, 2018These performances could have come from an old Folkways album. Colter Wall captures a long-forgotten time and place, keeping the cowboy folklore alive by reminding us that poignant songs sung by a superb singer will never sound outdated.
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Nov 12, 2018It’s an interesting artifact. Better, though, it’s another strong album from the young singer. Wall’s voice alone would carry these songs, but they’re each well crafted for the coherence of the larger picture.
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Oct 11, 2018On his terrific sophomore record, Wall paints a portrait of a mythic Canadiana, a western region of lonesome plains and grizzled frontiersmen, of rodeos and gunfighters, of hardscrabble existences and unlucky bounces.
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Oct 15, 2018Wall’s sophomore album, Songs of the Plains, uses the sounds of country icons like Waylon Jennings and George Jones as musical frames for the unfurled feel of those prairie stretches. Borrowing both the stylistic and storytelling genealogies of folk and traditional country, Wall extends a tip-of-the-hat to their golden fields.
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Oct 12, 2018The set walks a fine line with its retro-fetishism, but it manages to dodge hokey-ness thanks to Wall’s great voice, a low-key delivery, and invitingly haunted backdrops by legends like Lloyd Green (pedal steel) and Mickey Raphael (harmonica). Time-travelling lyrics help, too.
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Oct 11, 2018There’s no fuss in the instrumentation, either, mostly just gentle picking or brisk, deep thrums on Wall’s acoustic guitar, which are bolstered by icy laps of pedal steel and the occasional harmonica. It’s effective in the simplest of ways--and allows the listener’s imagination to do the rest
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UncutOct 11, 2018This second album tips a stetson to the neglected Western heritage of his native country, from the stark beauty of "Saskatchewan In 1881" to the deliciously luminous cover of Wilf Carter's "Calgary Round-Up." [Nov 2018, p.37]