Available via Digital Album or on a custom Compact Disk (CD), G. Himsel’s “Songs of Doubt & Despair” is a collection of songs from centuries past that have become painfully topical once more. Himsel’s opening track, Down on Me, is a cover of a freedom song dating back to the 1920s that vents the woes of, to put it almost too simply, trying to carry on in a world that rigs itself against the singer. The recording was reportedly done at the artist’s kitchen table; we hear a count-in before a slow guitar carries each chord on two resonating notes and lifts the vocalist’s tender and aching alto atop them.
Strangely, I can visualize the artist at his kitchen table, looking not at the guitar nor the microphone nor the table itself, but out a window as he sings the dread he’d have no words for. Already, Songs of Doubt & Despair promises to leave an impression both on those merely in need of catharsis through solidarity and sound as well as those well-read enough to recognize just how old these feelings of anxiety and helplessness really are. We are then counted into the next cover: Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.
This song’s origins are a little less clear; much of my research lists its original source as only “traditional” and not much is even known of the titular speaker set to be hanged. The vocalist drops his voice to a low, lullaby-like whisper as he relays the tale of an outlaw who trekked all over the country and made his last stand against the authorities only to be arrested and sentenced to hang. The narrator makes clear that it is not as if he only knows surrender; on the contrary, his surrender to be hanged is only after a lifetime of fighting tooth and nail, both cops and starvation, to survive—It is no surrender, but a respite. That grim acceptance seeps through the vocalist’s every word as it’s kept at the same soft, almost sleepy volume and timbre.
The next song covered is Polly Vaughn. Breaking from the previous two, though one could argue Hang Me, Oh Hang Me is the closer of the pair to a ballad, Polly Vaughn is a folk song originating in Ireland that regales the tale of a hunter who mistook his dear love for a swan while hunting bird. Distressed, the hunter carried her to her home before going to his father to confess his accidental crime while fraught with remorse; when he rode back out to where his love had been killed, he found a swan gliding by as the sunset. A tragedy, bittersweet in the breaking and balming of the hunter’s heart. What is poignant to note here—A moral to perhaps take from the tale that remains salient to the intent of the album—is that no amount of regret for what had been done could bring Polly.
Vaughn back. The past cannot be changed; only the future may. Even so, we are certainly allowed our grief.
Next, G. Himsel gently strums the opening chords to Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea. Originally recorded in 1958 by the Louvin Brothers and later recorded by Johnny Cash, the song was originally written by the Carter Family—A multi-generational folk band who recorded from 1927 to 1956, which is how Cash came to know and marry June Carter (later June Carter Cash). The story tells the tale of a hapless drunkard, kneeling and pleading for the Lord to have mercy on him. G. Himsel’s shaking voice follows the drunkard to the grave of his loving mother, who he had tried to be with as she died only to find he was a day too late. Why the drunkard drinks is irrelevant, we find, as he lies dead beside her grave just three years following her death. The singer concludes:
“I know that in heaven his mother he’ll see/For God has heard that drunkard’s plea”
The tale is a somber one of loss and grim reunion the voice of G. Himsel grants a sense of compassion and tenderness. The final chord rings out like churchbells as we move into the next track.
Katy Dear, our next track, is a traditional song known by several different names: “Silver Dagger”, “Molly Dear”, “The Green Fields and Meadows”, “Awake, Awake, Ye Drowsy Sleepers”, and so on. Though there is some dispute over the tune’s origin, it’s regarded as an American folk ballad originally featuring a female narrator who turns away a male suitor on her mother’s advice. Katy Dear is a variant featuring a male narrator, in which G. Himsel takes on the role of this man seeing a potential bride. He begs her to ask her mother and father for them to marry, and if they decline, even offers to elope; his bride explains that she cannot, as her parents are asleep with a silver dagger at their side to kill him. Thus, the narrator takes that dagger and plunges it into his own heart, if he cannot take dear Katy for a bride; his love takes her own life in just the same way, saying her goodbyes to her mother and father as she dies with “the one (she) love(s) the best”. G. Himsel relays the tale of star-crossed lovers and doomed romance with a tone that sounds almost like a wistful sigh, and one must wonder if this ballad is not only sung with reverence but with a heart that can relate to being more willing to die than give up our love.
The next track on Songs of Doubt & Despair is called The Auld Triangle, originally written by Dick Shannon and included in the 1954 British play The Quare Fellow by Brandon Brehan. It tells the
daily laments and strife of a convict in a prison by the canal. The song’s refrain appears at the end of each stanza, referring to a large triangle the warden would ring to wake the prisoners:
“And the auld triangle/Went jingle jangle/All on the banks of the royal canal”
G. Himsel sings in a higher register for this track, likely to match the comparatively upbeat strum pattern on his guitar. The result is a folksy, authentic American rendition of a raw cry of frustration and sigh of defeat from the British show tunes of the 1950s. Closing out on a rallentando, despite the subject matter of the lyrics, I can say that this track is among the brightest sounding on the album.
The next track is Angel Band, an American gospel song dating back to the late 19th century. At the end of a believer’s life, they call for the angels to carry them home. G. Himsel continues using that higher register and I can nearly hear his voice crack with emotion. The vocalist’s breathing becomes a little more pronounced as his heart is truly poured into this hymn. It makes sense, in truth; the call for
the angels to carry one to heaven is ultimately a cry for mercy, to have the whole of one’s earthly suffering relieved at long last. A lot of us wish for a lighter soul in these times. G. Himsel’s emotion is not lost on me, and I will admit that I shed a tear as well as I let the lyrics of our foreparents wash over us.
The album’s final track, I Wish I Was A Mole in the Ground, is another traditional American folk song (called a “mountain banjo song” by its original singer, Bascom Lamar Lunsford) first recorded in 1928 that may date back to 1901. The narrator has returned from the state penitentiary after more than one stint, in which he had wished he were a mole so he could “root this mountain down”, or a “lizard in the spring” so he could “hear his baby sing”. Upon his return, he urges his love to let her hair hang down and to celebrate—He’s finally back with her at last. Considering the grave endings to other ballads on this album, this choice strikes me as particularly hopeful to end off on: Perhaps we will endure hell. Perhaps we will wish there were better options. Perhaps we may never even see an end to the misery, or feel as though we will never see it. But when the world as a stage disappoints, where do we turn? To the individual actors. To the ones in our lives, we love most. When we return to them, the world’s problems and even the tyrannical rule of fascists can become white noise in the background hen in the arms of the one you love above all else. Therefore, G. Himsel reminds us of that much with
this final track; we cannot afford to isolate ourselves in our sadness. We must take respite in the ones love most if we are to make it through the next few years.
All in all, G. Himsel’s Songs of Doubt & Despair is a collection of heartfelt and home-grown (in all the best kinds of way) covers of iconic English struggle songs. Perhaps anxiety and aimlessness are just as American as any other virtue ostensibly attributed to patriotism—This collection certainly argues such a case, as each selection remains just as topical today as it was at the time of publication. The world was uncertain and dark then, and we have entered a very uncertain and dark time now, truly. With this album, let us at least take comfort in solidarity; perhaps we can share that solidarity with our loved ones, and cherish them appropriately now and for the rest of time to come.
Written by Alexei Lee
