bought this because i heard a clip on bbc2. best purchase i have made in a long while. the songs are soothing, foot-tapping and easy to learn. brilliant for listening to on long car journeys, relaxing, or back ground music whilst entertaining. Gillians voice is fantastic as is her partner in crime - david rawlings. what a team. Elvis Presley blues must now be one of my all time favourite songs.

From the moment you play this album, the words and melody will stay with you. The music is a simple guitar duet, but what really makes this album stand out is the fine songwriting and hauting voice of Gillian Welch. The standout songs on this album are "April the 14th", "Revelator" and "I Dream A Highway".

Normally, I wouldn't like a song like "April the 14th", since musically (and even lyrically, with its out-of-time-and-place historical allusion) it is a dead ringer for Neil Young's "Cortez, The Killer". However, Welch owns the song, and no one can say that it isn't a fine piece of songwriting in its own right.

This is probably one of the best examples of contemporary country music out there.

The first time I saw the Elvis Presley Blues video, I knew that I would have to find out about Gillian Welsh. I bought the Revelator CD and have not been disappointed. I still love Elvis Presley Blues which reminds me of Come to Jesus by Mindy Smith which is also one of my favorite songs.

Each song is very strong although I Dream A Highway is somewhat too long. I usually turn it off before it ends but that is only a small quibble. This is a must-have CD from a great musician who has the courage to create music true to its roots without fear of failure. David Rawlings is the perfect accompanist for her.

A lot of reviewers on amazon are too liberal with the highly coveted five star rating. five stars should only be reserved for a masterpiece. maybe, some people do believe this is a masterpiece. i rated time as three stars, meaning it is a good album. Time does have some flaws where it is a bit uneven and slow. however, I do recommend it for the following reasons. Rawings' fine guitar solos and welch's strumming and vocals paint a dark and melancholy world. The album opens up with a revelation about ones life and the cd ends with "i dream a highway", a rhythmic fade out suggesting the journey never ends. it sounds like the lyrics and the rhythm can go on forever. In between are lyrics about okies, bad love, longing, the titanic and death. The two upbeat songs are country songs. The concept or the ballast of this album is the bluesy songs. There is a hint of old blues mythology and musical structure splattered about. The songs reflect sounds and words from blind willie johnson's "john the revelator" and his "god moves on the water". Casey Jones and John Henry, old blues icons, make an appearance in the songs. The lyrics are wonderful on this cd:
"They caught the katy / And left me a mule to ride"
"He was all alone in a long decline / Thinking how happy John Henry was that he fell down and died"
"Step into the light, poor Lazarus/Don't lie alone behind the window shade/Let me see the mark death made"

the song I did not like was "I dream a highway" because it was long and slow. My stubborn ears finally opened up and heard some of the best song writing on time. Discovering a new song on a old cd is treasure. i set around listening to time and wonder what they were thinking about when they wrote these songs, especially "everything is free" and "i dream a highway".

Gillian and Dave create an entire world of folk music in this album. Lyrics float back and forth between songs, (silver and gold, John Henry, many more) making the album sound like an inevitable whole. Makes you feel like all of these songs have existed for centuries, and generations of families have been singing them over and over and handing them down, keeping certain favorite stories in all of the songs or substituting them in for forgotten words. So many of Gillian's songs have an anthem quality, as if they've been distilled through many singers in one place over many years; this whole album sings like the songbook of that place.

And what could anyone say about Dave Rawlings' guitar??! It is heartbreaking! So tender, it makes me cry to listen.

I was disappointed in most of the tracks, but Red Clay Halo is worth the cost of the disc.

What can I say? Poignant? Moving? Poetic? Timeless? Above and/or below all, deeply beautiful? Or. How about stunning? Or. How about absolutely flooring you? ... or caressing you? Or. Filling you up with a piercing beauty that was not there just a moment before? And I'm definitely NOT a "Country" fan, per se (except maybe a bit of Richard Buckner, ha ha). Yet ... here, here where I might "usually" go off and fill the page with a flashy array of florid verbiage, subtly weaving streams and trails into a strong so-called "intellectual" case for what makes this great ... here ... here and now ... I rather simply be quiet and just invite you openly to listen ... listen to this amazing album. This cuttingly beautiful album.

Quite recently, I had sent emails to a couple of close friends now far away, saying how nice it is that my current favorite singer and guitarist just happen to be a duet. Thanks Gillian and David ! ......... Together you are a rare pair.

Cheers!

(Also, these guys are great live! A MUST SEE if they ever come to your town. Lucky you! ha ha hee hee)

I cannot imagine how these two could surpass the beauty of this effort. Proof that true craftsmanship does not need big arrangements. You will not notice the sparse instrumentation while you are listening, and maybe they could carry the songs vocally without any instruments at all. As for the songs your heart will be broken and mended again by the end.
This music is hard to classify for those that need to put things in boxes. It is what it is. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings being completely at ease with each other and their unique music.
Buy it now, turn them into millionaires and ruin everything!

Really good , especially Elvis Presley Blues. Could listen to it over & over. What a voice.

This CD by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings is a wonderful paradox. At time sounding country, at times blues, and at others sounding folk. The delivery is often understated, underproduced so that the spare purity and the eloquent sincerity of voice, lyric, and instrumentation blaze more brightly.

The power of Appalachian ballads, many derived from the Irish colonists to this nation, tell of hard life and reflection on that experience. Welch brings this tradition forward with music and lyrics as pure as cold mountain water. Welch's sense of the tragic is tempered by her voice, a transparent instrument of beauty that allows her soul to entertain us.

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlins create a music genre which is not quite like anything else. It contains strains of bluegrass, county, pop rock, and gospel. Most songs are very 'moving' in a strange and disconcerting way. She is kind of dark, but ultimately hopeful.
This music is poetry/ballad set to song. Some songs were VERY GOOD! I loved it, but it is not typical bluegrass. It will knock your socks off!

Some people will have difficulting steping out of our hectic busy
world and slip into the slower timestream in which this fine
album exists. But if you can make that step you'll find an
incredibly rich and haunting album to reward you. Highly
recommended for people able to overcome their Attention Deficit
Disorder, who can take a deep breath and pause in their lives to
appreciate a thing of beauty.

if i really wanted to quibble, i'd say this record is uneven. some of the songs are so intense that others which would be amazing on their own pale by comparison. revival and sould journey are a bit easier to listen to but this is the masterpiece. revelator and april 14/ruination Day are so good it hurts. this should really be heard on vinyl but cd will have to do.

Restraint and humility are not virtues much in evidence in our big country's popular music scene, but it's quite amazing what they accomplish here. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings reach maturity on their third release, and deliver us a big fresh chunk of America never properly presented before -- the Okies in their own voice and dense mythology. We have had them pitied by John Steinbeck and we have had them ridiculed by many; I don't know if Welch really started out as one, but if not it hardly matters, in that case she has convincingly transformed herself into one.

Every song is a wonder and remarkably unique musically and lyrically. Welch knows exactly what she is doing too, but is so perfectly cool and centered she never blows her cover. Now haunting, now silly, now wild, now sheer poetry -- one hesitates to pick out one song from this carefully woven tapestry of moods and voices. The marvelous, half-surreal, half too grittily true evocation of Okie dreamtime holds it all together, though, a motherlode of oral history of their own tragedies endured and mixed up with other peoples' tragedies, from the Titanic to the Lincoln assasination.

This is the stuff of which major epic poetry is made. Here the separate pieces float as if in suspension, just on the verge of gelling into pure verse on pages of a book, the instruments gone but the music remaining in the rhyme and rhythm. It is a resonant tale and memory these people have to tell, and Welch's greatest gift is the humility to step aside and let them tell it, lend her voice generously to articulate their passion.

Gillian Welch is a truly gifted musician, and it's an incredible pleasure getting to listen to any of her music. With "Revelator," Gillian has made a very solid follow up to her previous, and best album, Hell Among the Yearlings. There are no songs I can bear skipping over, and many I have to listen to twice before going on to the next.

Gillian Welch has a very unique style, and it's completely her own. For anyone who hasn't heard her previously, do yourself a favor and listen to some of the 30 second clips provided here. From the title track, which is a very somber and delicate song, to Dear Someone, which is a very soft, melodic and almost tropical sounding tune.. Red Clay Halo, which shows Gillian's accomplice, David Rawlings at his finest.. and my favourite, Ruination Day part 2.

Gillian's music is very folksy, in a very honest and sometimes heartbreaking way. Her voice is so smooth, and her strumming on the guitar strings very effective.

Best part of this cd is the closer, I Dream a Highway .. which goes longer than 14 minutes. Just seeing that, most people would get turned off from trying this song.. but it's incredible. Can put you to sleep with it's tranquility, or just make you sit there and wonder about life. It's incredible, and a must hear!

Give this one, and her previous cd, Hell Among the Yearlings a shot... this is so good, you can't miss it!!!

Time (The Revelator) is a wonderful, mournful and honest thing. It gets better and better with every listening. Contrary to the Amazon review, I think that I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll is the weakest track, its light-hearted upbeat tone is out of place with the rest of the deadpan songs. But every other track is dead on. It's all sad. Gillian's gift is to say things in a simple way, the songs have a mean gravity. Singing about Elvis, she describes him as an ambiguous gendered creature, "he shook it like a chorus girl, he shook it like a Harlem queen." It's really vague, almost trailer trash, but it is powerfull. "I could get a tip jar, gas up the car." Honesty is a rare thing, a real treasure. Thank you Miss Welch.

I was hoping to hear something like Alison Krauss or the Whites or something bluegrassy or folkish like John Prine. This is in a category all by itself. Nowhere.
I played it once about a year ago when I bought it and then again last night and I still don't like it. I can't even tap my foot to it. It's just too darn S L O W. I did not know a person could write a slong as slow as these things are. And her voice is just boring. Excuse me, but you can keep your Gillian Welsh.

If you're looking for a Gillian Welch album to begin with, I would recommend "Revival." Revival was the first album of hers I'd got, and I was ecstatic after giving it a listen. (See my enthusiastic review on amazon.) Naturally, I couldn't wait for more, so moved on to Time.

"Time" may be the revelator, but it's also a letdown. The album is just tooooooooo sloooooooooow. So much so that at times it plods. Painfully along. Note ... by ... note.

I don't know what it is. Her voice is still there, good as ever, but it lacks heart and soul. Which can't be injected into a song just by slowing it down. Notable exceptions include "Red Clay Halo" (my favorite) and "I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll." And the title track, "Revelator," though slow, still has something special to it.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'll be a one-disc Gillian fan. I'm reluctant to try Hell Among the Yearlings or her newest one, based on my disappointment with Time.

This is a gorgeous album. Like many people, I first learned about Welch & Rawlings through their work on "O Brother Where Art Thou" and "Down by the Mountain." Despite having little previous interest in bluegrass, I was instantly hooked. I finished collecting their albums this year, and was delighted to find out that "Time (The Revelator)" was the best of a very good body of work.

I'm especially fond of the eerie title track, "Revelator," a contemplation of Welch's own success. The songwriter successfully walks a fine line between invective and self-pity, and her refrain -- "Time's the revelator" -- is at once fierce yet chilling. Rawlings's guitar accompaniment is equally fantastic; he's an astonishing musician. Together, they make the song into a small masterpiece.

(Incidentally, I saw the two of them play this at a venue in Atlanta several months ago. When they got to a particular four-letter word towards the end of the song, the seemingly grave audience cheered with delight).

Other highlights:
The sweetly seductive "Elvis Presley Blues" will get to you even if you've never cared for Elvis. It seems like pure heartland at first, but has a touch of Lou Reed-like suggestiveness.
"I Want to Sing That Rock And Roll" was the first Welch/Rawlings tune I ever loved, and it's still a good one. Like other reviewers, I wish they had re-recorded the track for this album; the ovation at the end is a little disconcerting.
"My First Lover" is the album's most leisurely and enjoyable song; thudding power chords recall a lazy, stupefying roll in the hay.
"I Dream a Highway" is the album's other masterpiece, a 14 minute ballad with a narcotic, haunting intensity. Despite its length and repetitive melody, it never gets boring; instead, it invokes an eternal road trip through loneliness and revelation. It's a great song -- the thrillingly slow finish to a marvelous album.

Welch's voice and Rawlings' guitar sound as intense, beneficent and honest as music can get. I enjoy an extremely addictive mixture here of haunting poetry and music that comes straight from the heart, in an American country/folklike-style that reverberates and finds refuge in my soul immediately. A music of 'instant melancholia', or, if I may borrow some of Welch's own beautiful lyrics here- a music that's like '(..) morphine' that 'will be the death of me'. Very impressive and highly recommended!

Hearing her music is like hearing the calls of an extinct bird, or the passionate cries and moans and laughs of the men and women who inhabited the old lands, the wild frontiers, the shotgun shacks of the hill countries, who lived on the back of Ford pick up trucks chasing the seasons round the country, like a bunch of people sitting round a campfire in a desolate wilderness, yet it has a modern day twist which makes it sound relevant in today's world that has moved on in leaps and bounds from those early days, which makes it sound like she's singing about today's troubles the same as yesterday's troubles the same as last year's troubles the same as the troubles of all men and women who came before and will come after. Gillian Welch taps into all that, yer.

This whole CD is amazing, as is every Gillian record, but in particular, 'I Dream A Highway' is one of the most beautiful, touching, lyrically incredible songs ever written. The fact that a 15 minute song ends and I want to listen to it over and over again is astounding. Go find the lyrics on the web somewhere and read them while you listen to the song. Unbelievable. One of the greatest pieces of music ever written by any Nashville songwriter, or anywhere else for that matter.

Gillian and Dave have done it again! They have created an album of simple, early American style folk music, and churned out an album, timeless in quality and as attention grabbing as an album can be.

First, all 10 songs here are arranged for the duo of two accoutsit guitars (the second track, "My First Lover" substituting a banjo for a guitar). There are no effects (or so it sounds like) and a few tracks sound as if they don't even have windscreens on the microphones; all of these tracks, it is safe to guess, werer recorded with no overdubs. (Of course, track 6, "I want to sing that rock & Roll was recorded live at the Grand Ole Opry on what sounds like one and only one stage microphone).

All of this, on another record, could add up to real crap, but on a Gillian Welch record, I could imagine it no other way. It sounds as if the two are literally playing these in your living room and when you think of that possibility, your heart breaks because you wish they truly were.

And what about substantially? My favorites are "My First Lover", a strange mix of appalachian banjo-like bluegrass and 70's rock sensibility; "My Dear Someone", a complete and sparkling throwback to the old country ballads a la Patsy Cline; "Everything is Free Now", a more modern folk tune with bobbing-and-weaving lyrics that I suspect are about napster; and last but not least "I Want to Sing that Rock & Roll", which appeared in a studio version on the CD of music inspired by "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou".

A favorite of most listeners is the 14 minute ending track called "I Dream a Highway". It consists, really, of one chord progression with lyrics that gradually and sweetly unfold to reveal a Dylan-like landscape (almost a story but not quite). While it is a great track that can easily put you in a achingly sweet trance, it is not quite a favorite of mine, particularly as its already slow pulse gets periodically slower as the track was recorded without a click-track. If that makes me snobby, my apologies.

In conclusion, I first heard the album last week and have yet to get most of the songs out of my head for any more than an hour at a time.

In the same way that it's impossible to classify Miles Davis as 'jazz' because everything about his music bursts out of the confines of that label, so it is with Welch - & especially with this album - to call it country or folk or bluegrass or whatever would be to do it an injustice. Quite simply this album is unique - there is nothing like it to be found anywhere - even her other recordings don't come close. It's possible to find adjectives like sincere, intelligent, dark, soft, brooding but somehow they don't do Revelator justice - one needs bigger words like truth & perfection & timeless to come close to giving an impression of how this now famous recording affects. Just two acoustic guitars & two voices - but two very different people - Welch is laid back, 'late' on the note & very feminine, whereas David Rawlings has an aggitated masculine urgency which Welch embraces & controls beautifully to produce songs with a delicious underlying tension - nothing middle-of-the-road abt this - in fact this recording reveals more about real feminist politics than anything else I've come across - this album reveals how women will save the world.

This is the first "review" I've ever written. It was inspired not only by this CD, but by the pleasure of hearing Gillian and David at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco last weekend, and again in Paradise, California two days later.
In an era when so many of the voices we need in society -- literature, philosophy, film, classical music, jazz, rock -- are losing their impact and even dying out, leaving us with empty slogans and no direction, it is more important than ever to praise and support the few great artists still working. Gillian and David are two of those artists, certainly. Their songs are moving, visionary, ironic, sensual and tender. In person, the humor implicit in the material comes out even more strongly. I get the impression that these two people are intelligent enough to do anything they want to in life. We should thank them, over and over again, that they have chosen to make music. "Time (The Revelator)" is, melodically and musically, one of the great songs in all "popular" music, as is "I Dream a Highway." But why highlight just a few? Gillian and David have found truth and light in a time of darkness. I love them for it.
By the way, I am going to share a small secret with you: Don't let the album covers mislead. Gillian Welch is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She may be sardonic, but she is also radiant.

Gillian Welch has released a string of excellent albums. Of them, I would have to admit to loving this one the most. Time (The Revelator) is her third album, and the first one in which she does not have T-Bone Burnett as her producer (her collaborator David Rawlings takes that job).

The result is quite a drastic change. While her earlier two albums are quite rooted in the more old-timey bluegrass traditions, Time has a much stronger tie to folk: songs like Revelator sound as though they came out of a Dylan songwriting course.

The sound itself is beautiful - somewhat barebones (as is the case with her other albums). Her voice is supported by one or two guitars, and occasionally a banjo. However, unlike the earlier albums, this instrumentation is used such that the music breathes easily, and flows very naturally...it's less tense than I had expected.

The closing track, I Dream a Highway, seems to polarize listeners. It is certainly a bit of a marathon - 15 minutes in length, and also features a fairly smokey, drugged sound (described by one journalist as a stoned sound). For me, the song is a shining example of Gillian Welch's abilities as a songwriter and as a musician. She has written not only a fabulous (if really long) song, but is also able to maintain my interest for its duration. Naysayers may call it a pretentious piece of garbage...I think they just want to bash something in order to seem intellectual.

Although maybe I'm wrong here - the folk sound may not be for some people. However, if it's your cup of tea, then this is definitely for you.

Born into the hardscrabble life of Beverly Hills showtune writers (Carol Burnett Show, etc, young Gillian learned to not sing about the things around her: money, wealth, celebrity, but to mine images of an Appalachian past. Gillian learned through grit and preserverance to learn the old ballad style at the Berklee School of Music.

Stuff like this makes me want to scream. Some carpetbagging Yankee woman trying to sound like she's from Pike County, Kentucky or something. Plus, she bullies her way onto the stage with true talents like Ralph Stanley. Why doesn't she sing about not knowing what kind of brie to serve with her book party isntead of moonshine stills and stuff like that?

Earnest, fervent and with the right amount of rough-around-the-edges, Gillian Welch sounds so convincingly Appalachian that when I found out she grew up in Los Angeles and not the foothills of Tennessee, I didn't believe it. A true musician through and through (Welch studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston), her music has the authentic quality of folksy bluegrass and gospel. Her voice, which has the soul of a wayfarer and can move you to tears with its plaintive, emotional sensibility, is finely crafted...yet startlingly ordinary. This album is a beautiful testament to American music.

The first cut I heard on this CD was "I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll", which sounds like it could have been sung at either a pentecostal camp meeting or by someone asserting their rights to come onstage for amateurs' night at the Palais. That sold me. And somehow there's a blend of rock and religious imagery throughout, as in the "Elvis Presley Blues": "and he shook it like a Holy Roller with his soul at stake, with his soul at stake, soul at stake." The spare production, perhaps just Welch's and David Rawling's instruments, and Welch's soft, somewhat scratchy voice evoke listening to country lp's on a summer night.

This is my first and only Gillian Welch album. I love her unique sound and approach to some truly great music. The song "Dear Someone" is one of my favorites of any genre. The vocal harmonies in that song are simplistically beautiful yet interesting. Some of the songs aren't my favorite but overall this is a unique and excellent album. If you were introduced to Gillian Welch through the "O, Brother" soundtrack as I was, expect a couple of tunes in a similar style and some that are quite different in mood. If you just want more "O, Brother" style songs this is probably not the best place to start. If you have a more open mind, you will probably enjoy this album.

Gillian Welch's album is deceptive. Much of it is dominated by one woman's voice and one acoustic guitar. Many songs add a second guitar and on occasion a harmonizing voice. The artwork on the jacket is just as deceptive, confirming the presence of Gillian Welch, her guitar and a guileless young man also with a guitar. There are four microphones. That's it.

Somehow, despite or maybe because of, the limited set of voices and instruments, Welch's sound is complex and layered. I read that Welch attended one of the top music schools, like Berklee or Oberlin and that her simplicity is a ruse or a guise or perhaps an act of rebellion to obfuscate her academic roots. If you didn't know she attended such a school, it'd be easy to imagine she grew up in an isolated mining town in Appalachia somewhere. She's been featured on the "O Brother Where Art Thou", which has brought new attention to so-called "mountain music" As the other artists on "O Brother", Gillian Welch's sound is natural and lulling. Singing always without vibrato and purposefully restraining from the "pretty" sound of singer Alison Krauss, Welch builds an aesthetic base through layers. First one guitar, then two. One voice, two. The narrative line straining against the foundation of strings and voices. There is a pleasant tension always at work in each piece: an otherworldly combination of beauty and sadness.

Her lyrics are far less literal than her "O Brother" peers. From the title track, "Darling remember when you come to me...I'm the pretender. I'm what I'm supposed to be. But who could know if I'm a traitor, Time's the Revelator." I don't even really know what she's singing about. It's partly testament to the way the words become sounds in the tapestry of the song, individual threads composing the whole. No doubt her classical training taught her to dwell on vowel sounds, which rounds out the melodic lines, but also obscures the underlying lyrics. For me, the sound is engaging enough that the layers of meaning contained within the words will likely satisfy a longing for more from this album years down the road.

Gillian Welch's album is beautiful and timeless in a non-cliche kind of way. She definitely doesn't sound like the product of the 1960s and has no parallel in today's market, be it folk, rock, jazz or blues.

I had only heard a few tracks of Ms. Welch's music before purchasing this CD. The spare clean arrangements of these wonderful songs took my breath away. The title track may be the best new folk song of the new century, while "Elvis Presley Blues" is one of the best acoustic folk blues I have heard period. I look forward to Ms. Welch's next CD with great anticipation

this album doesn't keep me. I felt no excitement. I listened a couple times and then gave it away.

The effect this album has is very rare. I spent considerable time in BlueGrass land before coming back to the craziness of the city and it's so miraculous to be transported back to that slowness, that directness, that honesty. There is no pretention in anything Gillian does. The album cover, though it does little to entice you to buy this album, speaks volumes about the simplicity and openness of this album. I'm a professional DJ with over 4 thousand reconrds in my collection and this is definately my favorite album. No you can't dance to it, there's nothing about the city or coctails, or getting laid in here. It's very grown up, very real, very deep without being complex in the slightest. I had the privilage of seeing her in concert and after 2 hours of slow quiet "southern" music, this very "northern" audience gave the loudest standing ovation I have ever heard. There is somethign very central to the simplest and fullest spectrum of humanity in her music. The only way to really describe this album is -- graceful

this cd is simply one of the most beautiful, sad, reverent and true albums I've ever owned, and despite listening to it until its tracks skip i have yet to become tired of it. it reminds me why i love the human ability to make art when i begin to lose faith. it is often gorgeous in an aching way, with a true sense of loneliness and the excruciatingly poignant nature of loss...though a few songs are more apt to revive you, this is an album best heard in a quiet room with plenty of time to think and repeat track after track.