Diana Jones took a circuitous route to being a country singer. It began on Long Island, in a rock and roll town where she eschewed the music of her peers in favor of Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash. After college she met her birth family, including a grandfather who played with Chet Atkins, and she found her musical heritage. While she made a few early albums that were a bit more mid-1990's singer/songwriter affairs, she really caught people's attention with her 2006 country debut. That album was dedicated to and filled with songs written about the memory of her recently deceased grandfather On her latest, High Atmosphere, she branches out thematically, while staying tied to the traditions of old fashioned bluegrass. She is joined on this venture by Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor as both an singer, instrumentalist and co-producer. Together they fuse her contemporary singer-songwriter sentiment with his old string band sound for a pretty, if slightly uneven album.
The album opens with High Atmosphere, a song in which Jones uses the to literal elevation of flight to escape from all of her troubles. It is an unfortunately weak track to use as both the opening song and the title. The metaphor is a bit too clunky to get lost in and the sentiment just a tad too modern to fit the feel of the melody. “Where do you go when you're tire in your soul, its too soon to join the choir in the sky,” she asks in “I Don't Know.” It is a bright song, with a toe tapping melody that belies the contemplative nature of the lyrics. The album takes a darker turn on the next track. “Sister” is a pre-murder ballad that finds Jones' character watching her sister marry, with a sense of dread, a man whose first wife is still missing. She pauses on the sidelines, waiting for the moment when she is needed. This is followed, somewhat ominously, by “I Told The Man,” a pretty funeral ballad about the death of a coal miner. While most songs on the album have religious undertones, she opens embraces the theme on “Little Lamb.” The song finds Jones taking comfort in the premature loss of a loved one by picturing their place in heaven. Jones takes a break from death and funerals for “Poverty.” This song finds her contemplating the way in which poverty invades the lives of people affected by it, as an almost physical, malevolent presence. This is followed by “My Love is Gone,” which would have more comfortably proceeded it. Jim Lauderdale offers vocal support for the two strongest tracks on the album, “Don't Forget Me” and “Funeral Singer.” The first is a stirring ballad about a man in jail facing his first chance to get out in decades. The second finds a pair of singers facing yet another funeral with their songs as they only gift they have to offer. “Poor Heart” is a sweet, but rather forgettable ditty. “Drug For This” find Jones grappling with the harrowing pain of loss and wishing for a pill to push it off just a little bit longer until it doesn't hurt quiet so bad. The album closes on another relatively weak note. Its not that her rendition of the traditional “Motherless Children” is bad on its own, but it pales mightily in comparison with a recent cover by Rosanne Cash for her epic album The List.
Diana Jones' High Atmosphere is a solid and enjoyable album of traditional bluegrass with a modern feel. It is also a fairly easy album to miss, coming as it does, in the middle of two highly publicize bluegrass releases by Sierra Hull and Alison Krauss. And, to be fair, High Atmosphere does not reach the same heights as those two albums. However, it is a pretty album none the less. Packed with tasteful instrumentals and well chosen guests, the music packs its own sort of quiet punch. While it is never the album that will jump to the top of a must have list, it is the perfect album to pick up on those less densely packed shopping weeks.
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