Hell Among The Yearlings

Rolling Stone (9/3/98, pp.102-104) - 3 Stars (out of 5) - "...Welch sings with a world-weary resignation....(the) bare-bones instrumentation...settles softly on each track's surface, enabling her detached, narcotic voice to hover over the melodies. File next to Bruce Springsteen's NEBRASKA." Entertainment Weekly (7/24/98, pp.72-73) - "...The anachro-misery might seem all too precious if Welch weren't just a brilliant mimic but nearly psychic; you'd swear she was channeling the unwritten greatest hits of the Stanley Brothers....each improbably catchy elegy has a saving specificity of character and emotion attached to the tribulation..." - Rating: A- Q (1/02, p.123) - 4 out of 5 stars - "A os Angeleno Pixies fan who sounds like some God-fearing 1920s Appalachian farmer's wife...graveyard voice...[and] skeletally-picked guitar..." Uncut - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Here were Welch and Rawlings in pure mountain mode, their softly graceful harmonising complemented by brittle, almost tinny guitars that recalled Willie Nelson." Uncut (9/03, p.92) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...This is Welch in full, dark flower....A beautiful, literate record earthed somewhere between the dustbowl and the woodpile..." Uncut (11/01, p.124) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Brilliant..." Dirty Linen (6-7/99, p.77) - "...the songs are natural objects, scarcely betraying that they were written at all; they sound as if they have always existed....This record is darker and starker than the first, but more solid and more natural; a wonderful work."