Gillian Welch&david Rawling Woodland

After looking at the cover of Gillian Welch's debut album, Revival, and listening to the first two cuts, "Orphan Girl" and "Annabelle," you'd be tempted to imagine that Welch somehow stumbled into a time machine after cutting some tunes at the 1927 Bristol, TN, sessions and was transported to a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1996, where T-Bone Burnett was on hand and had the presence of mind to roll tape.

After looking at the cover of Gillian Welch's debut album, Revival, and listening to the first two cuts, "Orphan Girl" and "Annabelle," you'd be tempted to imagine that Welch somehow stumbled into a time machine after cutting some tunes at the 1927 Bristol, TN, sessions and was transported to a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1996, where T-Bone Burnett was on hand and had the presence of mind to roll tape.

Unearthed from a cache of home demos and reel-to-reel recordings, Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs is the second release of archival music from the vault of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. This remarkable 48 song collection, spread over three volumes, was recorded between the making of Time (The Revelator) and Soul Journey. It is an intimate glimpse at the artist’s sketchbook, containing some lifelong themes as well as some flights of fancy. The versatility and quality shown here greatly expand the Welch/Rawlings canon, and confirm that the acclaimed studio albums from the pair have never been an accident but a clear artistic choice.

Lacking some of the focus that made her debut album so stunning, Hell Among the Yearlings is nevertheless a thoroughly satisfying second album from Gillian Welch. Instead of backing away from the rustic folkiness of Revival, Welch deepens her bleak, clear-eyed world view, which makes her spare, old-timey arrangements all the more powerful.

Tribute albums frequently betray their subject, but not this homage to Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears, the country giant’s 1964 salute to Native Americans. A concept album about a discomfiting cause – the US’s treatment of its indigenous people – Tears was a radical statement resisted, to Cash’s fury, by the Nashville establishment. For its 50th anniversary, producer Joe Henry gathers a stellar house band that takes turns to lead. Gillian Welch delivers an entrancing As Long As the Grass Shall Grow; Emmylou does likewise with Apache Tears. Steve Earle drawls: “I ain’t no fan of Custer” and instrumentals evoke North America’s haunted plains. Very fine.