The descent from Dolly Parton’s last visit home, the gaudy 1994 album Heartsongs — overblown, overproduced, overcrowded, and altogether every bit larger-than-life as Parton herself — to the stripped-down, live-to-DAT musical framework of Hungry Again might give a lesser mortal nosebleed. But in this effort to redeem her career from a decade of nasty middle-age sag, Parton has rediscovered the fountain of youth and, in a word, she rocks.
It’s no small irony that while upstarts such as Gillian Welch and Neko Case beautifully reinterpret the music Parton was born with, their foremother — raised with ten siblings in a home made with little besides love — is finding her voice in handmade rock. Cousin and co-producer Richie Owens’ rock sensibilities give this record an edge absent from any previous Parton release, but the album’s dozen self-penned tracks also include sweet a cappella gospel, mandolin-and-multi-harmony bluegrass, and a couple tracks with vestiges of Nashpop gloss, cheek by jowl with hard-drinkin’ honky tonk (Yeah, “Why Don’t More Women Sing Honky Tonk Songs?”), as well as first-rate, bootie-boogyin’ Southern rawk, complete with fuzz-squall guitar solos.
“Salt In My Tears” pierces like an arrow on first listen and stays in your blood. Its unbeatable beat is as old and irresistible as rock ‘n’ roll, but the guitar riffs are as glaring and virile as you’d find in any noise band. They perfectly suit the message: “You ain’t worth it.” One hopes the more commonly heartsick protagonist in “I’ll Never Say Goodbye” eventually gets there.
Bluegrass harmony masters Rhonda and Darrin Vincent grace nearly every track, most stunningly in the poignant opener, “Hungry Again” (as in “Let’s love like we’re…”), the sparest song on the disk. Dobro, acoustic guitar and mandolin cosset the harmonies and glide easily over an awe-inspiring key change.
The choir of her childhood congregation joins her on the closing track, which features the lyric, “God gave us all a special gift/He meant for it to shine.” Parton’s gleams brighter than morning sun in the rustic, righteous realness of her original idiom — the sounds of her Tennessee mountain home.
