{"id":6244,"date":"2025-10-27T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T11:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-live-at-the-london-palladium-reviewed-mesmerising-ballads-and-barnburners-151852\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T11:03:00","slug":"gillian-welch-david-rawlings-live-at-the-london-palladium-reviewed-mesmerising-ballads-and-barnburners-151852","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-live-at-the-london-palladium-reviewed-mesmerising-ballads-and-barnburners-151852\/","title":{"rendered":"Gillian Welch & David Rawlings live at the London Palladium reviewed: mesmerising ballads and barnburners"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There is a comic moment, somewhere towards the middle of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings\u2019 second set, where Rawlings pauses to strap on a harmonica. To do this, he has to remove his cowboy hat, a gesture that provokes a roar from the audience, and a smattering of wolf whistles. Welch turns to face her partner. \u201cThat\u2019s how little they expect from us,\u201d she says, deadpan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There is a knee solo, some hillbilly dancing and a roar from the crowd<\/h2>\n

There is a comic moment, somewhere towards the middle of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings\u2019 second set, where Rawlings pauses to strap on a harmonica. To do this, he has to remove his cowboy hat, a gesture that provokes a roar from the audience, and a smattering of wolf whistles. Welch turns to face her partner. \u201cThat\u2019s how little they expect from us,\u201d she says, deadpan.<\/p>\n

They launch into \u201cSix White Horses\u201d from Welch\u2019s 2011 album The Harrow and the Harvest. It\u2019s a beautiful song, a poetic rendering of impending sorrow, delivered with minimal decoration. Rawlings plucks the tune on a banjo. Welch slaps out the rhythm on her thighs, underscoring it with the stomping of her boot heel. There is a knee solo, some hillbilly dancing and a roar from the crowd. As they do at the end of every song, Welch and Rawlings freeze, and smile to each other as if freshly amazed. Welch permits herself a joke, declaring the grand Palladium stage to be \u201ca way above average\u201d for clogging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The whole evening seems to exist on the fringes of mortality<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s not the only song about death. In fact, the whole evening, from the opening \u201cElvis Presley Blues\u201d to the final encore of \u201cI\u2019ll Fly Away\u201d seems to exist on the fringes of mortality. As they sing on \u201cLawman\u201d, \u201ceverything\u2019s dust to dust\u201d. There\u2019s a moment in \u201cElvis Presley Blues\u201d where Welch accentuates the line \u201cbless my soul, what\u2019s wrong with me?\u201d turning the shorthand of Presley\u2019s youthful exuberance into a prophesy of doom. \u201cI\u2019ll Fly Away\u201d, meanwhile, is delivered with the joyful exultation of a tent revival meeting, with Rawlings pogoing on the boards as he teases that final hallelujah.<\/p>\n

As on their last LP, Woodland, Welch and Rawlings get equal billing, sharing the stage with upright bass player Paul Kowert, who sometimes bows the strings, and occasionally (as on Rawlings\u2019 \u201cMidnight Train\u201d) making like the Tennessee Two. More often, he offers deep shading for contrasting guitars of Rawlings and Welch. Welch is percussive. Rawlings is just extraordinary. He plays his guitar as if it is a saxophone, embarking on spidery runs that seem to bend the time signatures of the songs out of shape. At his most intense, he looks like a man trying to sail a skiff in a hurricane, shifting his balance, craning his neck, as the power of the guitar jolts through him.<\/p>\n

A shift in emphasis from more straightforward country strums to more expressive songs<\/h2>\n

The set includes much of Woodland, and nothing from Welch\u2019s first two albums. Musically, that means a shift in emphasis from more straightforward country strums to the more expressive songs of later albums. Rawlings sings \u201cMidnight Train\u201d, \u201cRuby\u201d and \u201cCumberland Gap\u201d, offering a reminder that he is an underrated songwriter. Likewise \u201cHashtag\u201d, his celebration of the late Guy Clark, the lyric of which places Rawlings and Welch as reluctant inheritors of the Texan songwriter\u2019s mantle as the poet of truckstops and parking lots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most expressive instrument, though, is Welch\u2019s voice. She sings with such crystal clarity that the sadness of the songs is made somehow bearable. These are tunes of such sweet mourning. The imagery of \u201cEmpty Trainload of Sky\u201d could hardly be bleaker, but Welch coaxes the beauty from the landscape. Conversely, \u201cEverything Is Free\u201d may be a song about the penury of musicians in a time of streaming, but it arrives here as a more expansive lament for hard times. There are a couple of mood switches: a sweet cover of the Grateful Dead\u2019s \u201cChina Doll\u201d; and the penultimate encore, \u201cGoodnight\u201d, a Guy Clark-style talking song that sounds romantic, but could equally be the last farewell of a dying man. The highlight, though, is an extended \u201cRevelator\u201d, which spirals out of Rawlings\u2019 guitar like a Southern Gothic \u201cMarquee Moon\u201d, its dark mystery reflected in the clear spring water of Welch\u2019s singing.<\/p>\n

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings setlist for London Palladium, October 26, 2025<\/em><\/p>\n

Set 1
Elvis Presley Blues
Midnight Train
Empty Trainload of Sky
Howdy Howdy
Cumberland Gap
The Bells And The Birds
Turf The Gambler
Wayside\/Back in Time
Ruby
The Way It Goes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Set 2
Lawman
What We Had
Hard Times
Hashtag
Six White Horses
Wrecking Ball
China Doll
Red Clay Halo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Encore 1
Everything Is Free
Look At Miss Ohio<\/strong><\/p>\n

Encore 2
Revelator
Goodnight
I\u2019ll Fly Away<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Gillian Welch & David Rawlings live at the London Palladium reviewed: mesmerising ballads and barnburners<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There is a comic moment, somewhere towards the middle of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings\u2019 second set, where Rawlings pauses to strap on a harmonica. To do this, he has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4242,4243,548,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-david-rawlings","category-gillian-welch","category-live","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}