David Olney: The Wheel

by Lee Zimmerman

David Olney's music reverberates along the same lines as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and those other American minstrels who have etched their signatures into the firmament of today's contemporary country scene. Like those two, Olney's music isn't the slick, polished sound that Travis Tritt and Garth Brooks have made for commercial consideration. Rather it's often harsh, bittersweet and brazenly defiant, betraying honesty, integrity and the full range of human emotion. Its about outcasts, dreamers and ordinary people caught up in life's flow. That makes the title of Olney's latest opus, The Wheel, so profound. It's a song cycle of sorts, that compounds a sort of religious fervor, overtly on the gospel-tinged narrative Voices on the Water and the two short gothic chants that bookend the album, titled, appropriately, Wheels and Round. It's a theme that's also evident in the tangled angst of Revolution, a song that comes from the same dark recesses as Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash and the beautiful folk-like ballads The Girl I Love and All the Love in the World, two paeans to faith and fortitude. That's one of Olney's strengths -- the ability to travel such twisted terrain and yet somehow arrive back at the same conclusions. He goes from the brash bravado of swampy, blues-tinged rockers like Big Cadillac, Boss Don't Shoot No Dice and God Shaped Hole. to beguiling ballads while keeping the essence of his sentiments intact. The Wheel keeps turning and it's hard not to get caught in its spin.