Folk singers have always assessed the human condition and addressed issues of the day, not merely as chroniclers, but as interpreters, connecting past and present so they can ring out warnings against repeating our mistakes and exhort us to hammer away at injustices.
But examining the entire history of the world and its woes, from biblical times to right now, in one album? An impossible undertaking — or at least, it would have seemed so before singer-songwriter Carolyn Kendrick essentially tackled that task on her expansive new album, Each Machine, on Occulture Records. The album’s Dec. 6 release follows the Oct. 29 release of its second single, “Leela”; the first, “The Devil’s Nine Questions,” a haunting, lyrically “bastardized” traditional, was released Oct. 1.
In just eight songs, interspersed with spoken-word segments culled from political speeches and protests, the Los Angeles-based Berklee College of Music grad crafts a remarkable collage of moments in the world’s evolution — often wrapping droning notes or delicate harmonies into to soothing, Celtic-Appalachian textures that contrast with sometimes unsettling words and lyrics. They’re connected by a formidable entity who seems to dominate so much human interaction: the devil.
While Kendrick was conceiving the album, she was also researching the history of moral panics — especially “the Satanic Panic,” the 1980s cultural freak-out that led to 12,000 unsubstantiated allegations of Satanic ritual abuse, including the McMartin preschool trial — for the podcast “You’re Wrong About.” (She has also produced and written music for the “You are Good” podcast.)
Kendrick, who produced Each Machine and plays fiddle, acoustic and electric guitars, cuatro, percussion, piano, organ and accordion on it, incorporates several traditional and newer folk tunes; only one song, “A Perfect World,” contains original music (the lyrics are her interpretation of the David Keig poem, “The Devil is in Me”). She credits another poem, Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s 18th Sonnet to Orpheus, translated by A. Poulin Jr., as the album’s inspiration. Friends and family recite the title track’s verses, accented by acoustic guitar, orchestral chimes and a handheld harp.
Its final two stanzas:
See, the Machine:
how it spins and wreaks
revenge, deforms and demeans us.
Since its power comes from us,
let it do its work
and serve, serene.
With collaborator Isa Burke (Mountain Goats, Aoife O’Donovan), Kendrick experimented with sonic mood-setting as well as lyrical messages. On “Sumer (Sing Cuckoo),” a medieval English tune, their round-sung harmonies swirl around slowly building tympani beats, to captivating effect. On “Are You Washed,” one of two renderings of the 1878 hymn, “Are You Washed in the Blood,” Kendrick’s delicate soprano segues into Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “Evil Empire” speech, followed by Russell Conway’s “Acres of Diamonds” speech, in which he claimed, “I say you ought to get rich. And it’s your duty to get rich.” (In her illuminating liner notes, Kendrick explains that speech was “widely regarded as an influential text for the rise of the American prosperity gospel, a conservative theological movement that touts believers’ abilities to overcome poverty and severe illness through sheer faith.”)
Kendrick’s “In the Beginning” contains the voice of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders quoting the opening passage of the bible’s Book of Genesis while orbiting Earth on Christmas Eve.
“What does it mean to look down on the entirety of humanity, and have your first impulse be to recite an origin of creation story?” Kendrick ponders, adding, “Especially during the ‘60s, an age of potential nuclear annihilation? To me, it means that our most base instincts are to lean into and worship creation rather than destruction.”
Her podcast project included coverage of a Halloween Wicca celebration in Salem, Mass., at which Christian protesters physically fought with the celebrants; the segment “Blood of the Ancients” is her recording of the spontaneous Wiccan chant afterward.
“That project’s themes were very intense and about why we divide people into ‘us’ versus ‘them’: about the human impulse towards tribalism and devotion to systems or ‘machines,’ as well as the Faustian bargains we make as individuals and as societies in order to survive,” Kendrick explains.
There’s lots more food for thought packed into this album, but according to Kendrick, the chorus of “Leela,” an English adaptation of a Nepalese folk song, “says it all”: This world is just a game, winners lose and losers win, the game is still the same / This life is just a play, those who say don’t know, and those who know, don’t say.
“Every era of human existence has been met with difficulties, trials, troubles,” she adds. “Folk music is the living, breathing way that we learn from the troubles of our ancestors and apply the lessons to our current issues. … (it’s) a way of connecting to the human condition of now, the human condition of our ancestors, and the human condition of generations to come.”
About Carolyn Kendrick
Raised in Stockton, Calif., and Seguin, Texas, Kendrick began studying violin at age 4. She “found her place musically” in Berklee College of Music’s American roots program (which awarded her a Fletcher Bright scholarship). Touring the country as one-half of the Page Turners (winners of the 2016 FreshGrass Festival Best Duo award), she shared stages with Darol Anger, Bruce Molsky, Aoife O’Donovan, Kaia Kater, Hannah Read, Margo Price, the Clements Brothers and Jacksonport, and played prestigious festivals including the Newport Folk Festival, Greyfox Bluegrass Festival and Savannah Music Festival. “You’re Wrong About,” one of two podcast she has produced, was named iHeart Radio’s 2022 Podcast of the Year. She was the fall 2023 composer in residence at University of the Pacific in Stockton. Each Machine follows her 2020 EP, Tear Things Apart, and her 2021 album, The Music of You Are Good, Vol. 1, a compilation of music written for the “You Are Good” podcast she also produces.
Upcoming shows
Oct. 30 – Los Angeles City Center (High Occulture launch party)
Dec. 5 – The Back Room, Berkeley, Calif.
Dec. 13 – Healing Force of the Universe, Pasadena, Calif.
Jan. 16 – Palindrome Port Townsend Event Center, Port Townsend, Wash.
Jan. 17 – Concerts in the Barn –Quilcene, Wash.
Jan. 18 – Portland Folk Music Society, East Portland, Ore.
Jan. 19 – Churchill School, Baker City, Ore.
Jan. 21 – Jefferson Center for the Arts, Mount Shasta, Calif.
Jan. 22 – The Battery, San Francisco, Calif.
Jan. 23 – Freight & Salvage, Berkeley, Calif.
Jan. 25 – The Side Door, Sacramento, Calif.
