Gabriel Kahane – “What If I Told You” (Nonesuch)
Travelogue is a wonderful LP by THe Human League. It’s also a film, book, or illustrated lecture about the places visited by or experiences of a traveller. It’s also a stock-in-trade device of the folk artist, the wandering mistral, the poet and the corner house bore. It’s not easy to do well. Step forward Gabriel Kahane who does it very well indeed. – “What If I Told You” is touched by genius, a conversation on a train recounted – poetic and heartfelt, a long history told simply and beautifully, a reflection of American past and present. “They don’t need a hood or a cross or a tree”. The spare piano accompaniment is just about perfect.
From Gabriel’s Bandcamp “The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I packed a suitcase and boarded Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited bound for Chicago. Over the next thirteen days, I talked to dozens of strangers whom I met, primarily, in dining cars aboard the six trains that would carry me some 8,980 miles around the country. The songs on this album are intended as a kind of loose diary of that journey, and as a portrait of America at a time of profound national turbulence.”
YouTube 2018 Playlist
Spotify 2018 Playlist
