Album Review: Abundance Welcoming Ghosts by Red River Dialect

Midway through "Salvation," Red River Dialect's headlong foray into psychedelic folk-rock, David Morris yelps out the words, "Iced coffee brain freeze!" It's an odd moment, marrying a mundane idea with swirling fiddle and a relentless wah-wah guitar, and for that reason alone it could be easily parodied. It's also a captivating moment, one that anchors the song's loftier subjects to the everyday world and reveals something essential about Morris as a songwriter and bandleader. Red River Dialect are fascinated by tactile sensations, whether it's the sharpness of hot metal against your hand or the soft tension of a piano key under your finger.

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Shortly after recording Red River Dialect's fifth album, Abundance Welcoming Ghosts, the band's singer and songwriter David Morris left Wales to move to a Buddhist monastery in Cape Breton, NS, where he lived for nine months. Although Morris hadn't envisioned this move when he wrote the songs, they do anticipate it; in rugged folk-rock, Abundance Welcoming Ghosts concerns itself with journeys, exploring the topography of self, the ridges and contours of the past and geography itself — sometimes all at once.   For Red River Dialect ….

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Ascending from the ruminative coastal trail of 2018's excellent Broken Stay Open Sky, Cornish folk-rock combo Red River Dialect ramble further inland and up the mountainside of their fifth LP, Abundance Welcoming Ghosts. Helmed by Welsh singer, guitarist, and philosophical wordsmith David Morris, the group has enjoyed critical success and an increased profile over the past few years, thanks to a pair of albums that chronicle its leader's ongoing transformation following the untimely death of his father. The fragile grief-stricken meditations of 2015's sparsely arranged Tender Gold & Gentle Blue gave way to the sun-dappled melancholia of its aforementioned follow-up as Morris and his bandmates grew together in spirit and musical intuition.

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O ver the last 20 years, Cornwall's Red River Dialect have been twisting together folk-rock, Americana and spiritualism. Ringleader and songwriter David Morris is the son of an Anglican priest, brought up near Tintagel; he's now an active Buddhist, having recently emerged from a nine-month retreat. His band's last two albums - 2015's Tender Gold and Gentle Blue and 2018's Broken Stay Open Sky - played like moving responses to the sudden death of his father.

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