Sepia-tinted olde-style cover art, hmm. Photos of cactuses and tin-roofed shacks, eek. Band name: The Creekdippers, egad. Any fears one might reasonably have, on encountering this compilation of the ‘Dippers’ three-album career to date, of wonkily played pretendy-drunk alt.country and/or snoozily worthy Grammy-bagging ‘new folk’ are, however, happily misplaced.
The band Mark Olson formed after quitting alt.country pioneers The Jayhawks in record-industry-induced despair aren’t really a band at all: just Olson, his wife (singer-songwriter Victoria Williams) and his multi-instrumentalist best mate (Mike Russell), playing and recording at leisure in their kitchen – and this home-birth, pressure-free, dogs-friends-and-cooking environment lends …First Time a wonderfully ad-hoc, home-baked quality.
The musicianship alone – Spanish guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, bass, harmonica, snare, lap steel – is genuinely amazing, full of simple, dreamy, evocative playing, inspired on-the-spot improvisation and happy accidents, recorded in all their tactile, right-in-front-of-you glory. Mike Russell in particular is a treasure, his fiddle like a breathing, endlessly moving living thing, whether winding its way around Victoria and Mark on ‘Be On My Way’ like a ghost in the house, or shivering round the edges of ‘Mr Parker’ like the wind whistling at the windows.
Olsen is not your ten-a-penny Marlboro-man alt.country male lead, either: rather, he’s boy-voiced and ragged, wavering skinnily through slow-paced meanders like astonishing spoken-word-and-lap-steel love story ‘Into The Yard’ with Williams’ own piping, girlish Emmylou-alike trill wandering dreamily along behind him.
The effect is of a sun-exhausted Violent Femmes, pretending to be Gram’n’Emmylou, playing the Neil Young songbook, at fly-swatting, paint-drying speed. Absolutely lovely.