Now playing: Eliza Gilkyson: beautiful world

Beautiful World


Political events, and opinions about them, occur in the midst of other parts of life, death, falling in love, stopping by the grocery store, seeing old friends -- and so it is, in a sense, with the songs on Eliza Gilkyson’s latest album. Great Correction was the first song Gilkyson wrote, inspired in part community conversation she hosted each weekend in Austin, Texas, with minister Jim Rigby and Professor Robert Jensen. “We wanted to provide a place to discuss, grieve, and mull over our future without having need for an immediate solution other that the comfort of each other’s presence,” Gilkyson says. Through her musical career, Gilkyson has explored the tensions and the gifts that exist when poetry and politic meet, and here she offers some of her best lyrics and most adventurous melodies yet. Not to mention, she’s a top class singer. The snazzy, jazzy almost tongue in cheek Unsustainable , the raw look behind what the world may see in someone and who that person really is in Dream Lover, love, joy and celebration of nature in Wildewood Spring -- this is perhaps a gentler Gilkyson that has been apparent in her more recent albums, one who’s drawn by passion and commitment more than fueled by anger. No less outspoken, though, and still deeply poetic and musical.

Down at the corner of ruin and grace
I’m growing weary of the human race
Hold my lamp up to everyone’s face
Looking for an honest man...

are the opening lines of The Great Correction.

Chris Maresh, Elana James, Cisco Ryder, Cindy Cashdollar, and Glenn Fukanaga are among those who back up Gilkyson on the recording.

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