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'Misery' And The Old-Timey Futurism Of Odetta Hartman

Odetta Hartman's new album is titled <em>Old Rockhounds Never Die</em>.
Kate Warren
/
Courtesy of the artist
Odetta Hartman's new album is titled Old Rockhounds Never Die.

Odetta Hartman's songs have a way of spraying ideas in every direction. Sometimes, they don't even feel like songs so much as fragments, interludes or brief, fleeting brainstorms — blurted phrases set against chopped-up bits of violin, banjo, samples and effects. The effect is of a kind of old-timey futurism, if that makes sense: She's a singer and multi-instrumentalist who collects field recordings and studies early folk music, while her partner and producer Jack Inslee works to maximize her songs' darkest and most unsettling qualities.

On August 10, Hartman will release a follow-up to her terrific 2015 debut, 222. Old Rockhounds Never Die is highlighted by a brisk and unpredictable murder ballad called "Misery," which marries a hypnotic banjo hook to copious gunshot noises en route to a dizzying, rampaging climax. Like so much of Odetta Hartman's music, it draws from many styles and eras at once, while sounding like nothing and no one else.

"Perhaps the earliest song I wrote on banjo, this murder ballad has haunted me since I first visited the New Mexican deserts," Hartman writes via email. "The jury is still out over who killed who, but one thing is certain: the only justice found is that which we serve ourselves."


Old Rockhounds Never Diecomes out August 10 viaNorthern Spy and Memphis Industries.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)