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Track Listing LAND OF MILK & HONEY: 1. Hiway 9 2. Not Lonely 3. Tender Mercies 4. Dark Side of Town 5. Wonderland 6. Ballad of Yvonne Johnson 7. Separated 8. Runnin Away 9. Milk and Honey 10. Peace Call
Album Notes LAND OF MILK AND HONEY finds Eliza Gilkyson doing a splendid job of using a 1960s folk style as a template for singing about her dissatisfaction with early-21st-century issues. Gilkyson doesn't waste much time getting to the point, with the opening cut, "Hiway 9" serving as a prickly shot against the Bush administration's Middle East policy. From here, the Los Angeles native doesn't pull any punches, going from a tale of domestic abuse co-written with the song's subject (the heartbreaking "Ballad of Yvonne Johnson") to a previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie pacifist anthem ("Peace Call"). The latter is particularly interesting, since it doubles as a modern folk summit with Patty Griffin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Iris DeMent. Gilkyson even manages to keep a familial vibe going by not only serving up a country-flavored reading of her father Terry's "Runnin Away," but getting her kids Cisco and Cordelia to provide background harmonies on "Tender Mercies," a delicate-yet-disturbing tale of mothers living in the Third World.
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