UKNW SOUNDS : NIGHT BEDS (USA)
Poetry is not just destined for pen and paper. It also wants to twirl in the breeze of sounds and inspire sensual notes and maintain the idea that romance is not just a dreamland. Hope still shines in a place in the middle of Tennessee. Considered as the birthplace of country music, Nashville gives us “Night Beds” the emotional country-folk of Winston Yellen, a romantic young and proud 23 year old.
With his first album Sleep Country, Yellen lets rip a blazing sound with Gram Parsons, a song with a hint of Jeff Buckley. His classic and unpolished style is in keeping with that of other folk masters. Registered in the former home of Johnny Cash, the tracks could be the companions of a trip into the wild, they are love drunk and passionate, which run free in our purest of dreams. With vocal cords cut from crystal, Yellen gives us Faithful Heights, a cappella introduction that smells of the Lord’s Supper and candle smoke. It is with tears and a knotted stomach we listen to the sad Even If We Try, TENN and Lost Springs. Cherry Blossoms, a radiant and bewildering track shows how this small American plays with our feelings and it is with the same determination that this songwriter presents to us the invigorating Ramona and Borrowed Time.
Throughout the album the bittersweet setting does not go away. It’s hard to believe that the images of the clip ‘Even If We Try’ reflect the nostalgia and sparseness of his music. Yellen appears inactive in an idle rigid time. This discrepancy in fascinating and draws us in. We all know that the famous artists who “fight against their own demons” are placed in the top of the charts and we know that their discomfort runs deep.
An old country-folk – we agree -. Whatever happens, I leave you with his argument as confirmed in his last words of track TENN : “Floating on lost springs, faithful to heights I cling; Sorrow stole my youth, what’s left I’ll give to you”
Julien Catala