I've starred in a million dreams
Oscar winning only makes me mean
How it hurts to be eclipsed
We're all stars in our apocalypse
• Steph Gunnoe from "West Virginia Soundtrack"
To some, the Lonetones new album, Canaries, has the feel of a soundtrack. Perhaps it’s the lush musical production with layers of contrasting colors. Or maybe it’s the lyrical themes – songs for a “new Appalachia.” It’s not a soundtrack (at least not yet), but if it were, perhaps it would be best described as a soundtrack for life in modern Appalachia – an ode to a post-Oh-Brother-Where-Art-Thou era.
The album, and the band’s music in general, speaks to the conflicted nature of a region steeped in tradition while blighted by Walmarts and stripmines. It speaks to generational conflicts and the inner struggles of those whose hearts and souls are tied to the mountains but also want to be set free. But the album is not simply a lament. Rather, it is a hope that the old and the new can work together as a symbiotic partnership.
In the song “West Virginia Soundtrack” Gunnoe offers her assistance in this task: “I’ll be your midwife dark and alone, I’ll help you bear what’s never been born.” And in “Here In The South,” she promises to this end that “here in the south, ain’t gonna shut my mouth.”
The production of the album also reflects the conflicted nature of modern Appalachia (and contemporary “Appalachian” music). The band still has the partial look of an old-time string band with acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin and upright bass. But even these instruments aren’t always played in a traditional manner and the addition of drums and keys takes the music in new directions.
In a recent Knoxville News Sentinel interview, Gunnoe stated that "people expect you to be an old-time band when you have these instruments. Sean and I are always taking issue with people putting Appalachian music in a box. We want it to be something that's living and breathing." To this end, on Canaries, they also mix together electronic and found sounds (dissonance at times) with acoustic instruments.
Steve Wildsmith of the Maryville Daily Times describes it this way: “That dissonance may seem out-of-place on an initial listen to "Canaries," but repeated plays find McCollough and Gunnoe at a creative peak. The sound effects are understated -- sly and soft, contributing to a song's mood or melody in almost indefinable ways. The layers are arranged in gorgeous stacks, like the shimmering icing of a wedding cake -- intricate, detailed and personable. “
But amidst all of that, Gunnoe’s voice remains at the center of the band’s sound – of the mountains, but not satisfied to be just that. Jack Neely ofMetro Pulse says of her voice that “its overt innocence sometimes seems to conceal some deeper melancholy beneath the surface, a singing through trauma.”
The band can still reach into its bag of tricks and pull out a rollicking old-time tune with claw-hammer banjo and high lonesome harmonies. And some of their older, original material, still has the feel of a more "traditional" string band. But, just as Appalachian music has always combined elements of the past and present, regional and other, commercial and traditional, so it is with the Lonetones' music. They are part of the living, breathing tradition that has made the music of this region so exciting and innovative for over a century.