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Another Top-Shelf Discovery: The Sojourners

In truth, I had stumbled upon a couple other albums worth spending a few words on when Hope Nunnery overwhelmed me (blogged and blabbed about last week; you can find it easy enough, and you should find her CD pretty much immediately, if only to remind yourself what it's like to disagree with a critic...).

Vancouver, B.C.'s Sojourners -- not to be confused with the find magazine of the same name) -- aren't as striking a discovery as Ms. Nunnery. They are a trio (Marcus Mosely, Will Sanders, Ron Small) pulled from a larger group, the Vancouver Good News Gospel Choir. They also tour with Jim Byrnes, who had a role on a TV show about a mob infiltrator, but I can only remember that it was one of the early shows filmed in Vancouver, and that it wasn't bad. Byrnes has soldiered on as a bluesman, and a pretty fair one, though I've never quite succeeded in convincing my co-editor we needed to cover him. Byrnes has been right on the cusp with me a couple times.

Anyhow. Byrnes appears on the Sojourners' debut, Hold On, released on the Canadian label Black Hen. The too-facile comparison is to the Nylons, another African-American group (mostly, anyhow, and I'm relying on memory, always a dangerous friend in such times) resurrecting a form of American traditional music. The Nylons went for doo-wop, and quite well, though they were always a little pretty played up against the originals. The Sojourners -- whose members can claim some peripheral ties to Golden Age gospel (Small appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1958 as a member of the Fabulous Pearls, their press page says; the other two have crossed back and forth across various stages) -- have made a fair toss at hitting the sounds of Gospel's post-WWII golden age. Songs like "Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb" and the closing "Farther Along" are deeply rooted, and they have pleasing voices. Pleasing voices, though without quite the rough and ready character of those Golden Agers, and not quite as pretty as, say, Take 6. Which is about as far as I can go into the subject without exposing too much ignorance.

The thing is, I really like a couple of those Nylons albums. And I like the Sojourners for many of the same reasons. It's easy music to listen to, filled with joy, and sung without artifice. Steve Dawson's production is simple, easy, and entirely acoustic. Not easy listening music, but easy music to listen to. Our hipster friends won't be drawn in because there isn't a hint of feral fury to this work; it's just really good singing and first-rate gospel songs. And you can't listen to songs like "Satisfied With Jesus" and not know how much fun these guys are having singing together.

And that's enough. That's plenty, actually. Heck, it's not even Sunday yet.

Posted by grant on February 9, 2008 2:28 PM | Permalink