Pastoral harmonies dance alongside a quiet percussive beat in “A Little Less Gone,” but as incredible as they are in this track, they’re just as spellbinding in the up-tempo “Magazine Rack,” mischievously melodic “Hi Lonesome,” traditional bluegrass homage “Red Top Mountain Road” and deeply evocative “I’m Not Afraid.” Donna Ulisse sings with every bit of passion she’s got in her heart in these songs, as well as the groove-laden “When I Go All Bluegrass on You,” swing-happy “My Whole World is Standing Still” and exotic “Heart of Rosine,” all of which can be found on her latest album, Time for Love, which is out now everywhere independent music is sold and streamed. Through the instrumental brilliance of a complex “Get on Home Boy” or the simplistic sway of tracks like “When We’ve Got Time for Love,” “Come to Jesus Moment” and fiddle-led “I’ll Never Find Another Love,” Ulisse demonstrates just how adaptable a singer she is in this marvelous new LP, which I think just might qualify as the most well-rounded offering released in her career thus far.
The strings are often as communicative as the lyrics are in Time for Love, and despite the calculated detail in “When I Go All Bluegrass on You” and “A Little Less Gone” (just to name two of my personal favorites), nothing in this tracklist comes across as being over the top bombastic or virtuosic to a degree of arrogance. Donna Ulisse knows exactly who she is and what she wants her music to sound like at this juncture of her career, and though she’s still got an experimental side found in “Seven Lonely Days” and the temperamental “Heart of Rosine,” it’s clear she’s more than comfortable producing a sound that is at this point very familiar to her longtime fans. Doyle Lawson masterfully tailors everything around her powerful skillset, and though his production style was made for an artist like Ulisse, there’s nothing in this record to make me believe that its grandeur was created from behind the soundboard exclusively. This is all musicality and no mundane predictability, which is more than can be said for a lot of the contemporary Nashville output topping the charts at the moment.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/time-for-love/1480314375
All who love bluegrass with some strong influences from Americana, folk and old school country music should consider Time for Love required listening as we transition from the autumn into the winter season, and I myself definitely intend on spinning it long into the New Year. Donna Ulisse has come a long way in the last decade and a half, and while her brand is still impressively devoid of the commerciality that has plagued so many of her major label counterparts, it’s hard to imagine this latest release not attracting some mainstream attention (especially when taking into account the current climate of content among country music fans in particular). This record is loaded with some memorable bluegrass grooves and a lead singer who knows her way around a microphone better than most, and this November, that makes it a very worthwhile find.
Jodi Marxbury