![]() ![]() ![]() As exposed in a vacuum as Bruce Springsteen was when he made the song, she lets you hear how meticulously his first-person account of Charlie Starkweather’s death rampage was crafted to follow the structure of a traditional murder ballad - or maybe it’s her voice, the way it hovers over the details in the story, that’s rewriting the song that way. But it’s all there when she takes up this song. Without that there’s something missing: you’re not hearing all O’Donovan can bring into the world. ![]() This comes out only in folk songs that no matter their provenance feel as if they’ve always been present, that seem to carry dozens of decades and hundreds of singers before her. But there’s a strain in her singing that can dive much deeper, into a world where good intentions are meaningless and reckoning is waiting around the next corner like a bum with a paper cup. There is fun and freedom in the work that in the last years Aoife O’Donovan has done with I’m With Her - her as in Hillary. Aoife O’Donovan, “ Nebraska ,” from In the Magic Hour Solo Sessions (Yep Roc, 2019). LARB PRESENTS the July 2021 installment of “Real Life Rock Top 10,” a monthly column by cultural critic Greil Marcus.ġ. ![]()
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