Various Artists – We Are Each Other’s Angels
Nearly forty songs on two discs about angels? Images of touchy-feely, ultra-sensitive, Yanni-like, major-chord, synthesizer ballads come to mind, with a shudder. But rest assured: The angel songs in this collection are tuneful, tasteful and occasionally rocking. In fact, there aren’t any harps until Laura Freeman’s “Angels With Harmonicas” — and then the harps are the other kind.
Producer Jeff Campbell has accomplished the difficult task of sequencing the songs so that the discs move along at a lively pace. Various genres gently press against others — say, Peter Case’s folk ballad “Waltz Of the Angels” followed by the antique gospel blues of Rev. Gary Davis’ “I Heard The Angels Singing” — and the result is sonic enlightenment.
The cuts are a mix of new and previously issued, but virtually all of them are obscure, or relatively so, within the artists’ bodies of work. The ambitious set list is an Americana programmer’s dream: Delbert McClinton (“Sending Me Angels”), Don Dixon (“Angel, Angel”), Alejandro Escovedo (covering Case’s “Two Angels”), Ron Sexsmith (“Speaking With The Angel”), Nanci Griffith (“Waltzing With The Angels”), Billy Joe Shaver (“When Fallen Angels Fly”), the Kennedys (“Angels Cry”), to mention a few.
The Subdudes turn in an uptempo live version of “Angel To Be”. Radney Foster delivers a powerful, mandolin-driven character study about an “Everyday Angel”. Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey re-create a dBs pop vibe with “Angels”. Baritone Lenny McDaniel’s piano-and-choir “Tired Angels” evokes the bone-weariness suggested by its title. June Carter Cash’s spiritual “Wings Of Angels” is all the more poignant today.
Hungry For Music is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that for nine years has put musical instruments in the hands of disadvantaged children. We Are Each Other’s Angels is the fifteenth CD compilation assembled by HFM founder Campbell, who uses the proceeds to buy and distribute the instruments. If that’s not evidence there are angels among us…