Anne Brontë

Charlie Rauh: The Silent Current From Within

| Tyran Grillo

If Life must be so full of care,
Then call me soon to Thee;
Or give me strength enough to bear
My load of misery.
–Anne Brontë, “If This Be All”

In the soft yet indelible wake of The Bluebell, an acoustic solo album articulated around echoes of the Brontë sisters, guitarist Charlie Rauh reclaims a kindred power in his latest musical web, The Silent Current From Within, now joined by vocalist Ess See, drummer Ken Coomer, and bassist Jonah Kraut. Spinning his radii of inspiration via sister Christina Rauh Fishburne, Canadian poet Anne Carson, and Anne Brontë, whose words take nonverbal form through the capture spiral of these expanded readings, Rauh positions the listener as the anchor point of a pattern that has left its glyphs of fatigue on all of us in these times of social isolation.

The project at hand emerged when Coomer reached out to Rauh for a long-distance collaboration, adding Kraut for good measure as the songs took on new life. Thus were born three pieces around themes found in the work of Fishburne and Carson, each lending its own shade to the protracted dawn that is the album as a whole. The brush of a morning breeze is audibly felt in “A Marked And Mended Sign,” over the course of which the sun raises its eyebrow just high enough to clear a distant mountain range, while “Until The Charm Fades” crafts its light into a pair of hands pulling vegetation from the soil. “As Simple As Water” nourishes that crop with emotional nutrients, opening the sky like a heart primed to receive wisdom unfettered by the acrobatics of dead philosophies. Likewise, in these contexts, Kraut’s bassing and Coomer’s drumming don’t merely add to Rauh’s guitar, but rather draw out fruit from within it.

All of this is framed by the voice of Ess See, who guides an unaccompanied thread of improvisation through the title track and a multitracked choir with Rauh’s fretwork in the concluding “If This Be All.” In the latter, she unleashes cries at once born from and at odds with nature. She seems to question the tragedy of the pandemic even while bowing to its biological sovereignty. Such conflicts are central to the human condition, each standing like an abandoned building through which these songs have passed and left their fragrance, thus bidding the ears to inhale the incense of what came before. 

Temporally speaking, these are vignettes, the longest of which falls shy of the three-minute mark. Spatially speaking, however, these are vast oceans in which vessels of possibility sail in every direction a compass can imagine. The only question that remains: Will we burn our bridges or rebuild them before they fall?

The Silent Current From Within is scheduled for a March 12, 2021 release on Destiny Records.

Charlie Rauh: The Bluebell

| Tyran Grillo

Bluebell_Album cover

Stern Reason is to judgment come
Arrayed in all her forms of gloom:
Wilt thou my advocate be dumb?
No, radiant angel, speak and say
Why I did cast the world away;

Why I have persevered to shun
The common paths that others run;
And on a strange road journeyed on
Heedless alike of Wealth and Power—
Of Glory’s wreath and Pleasure’s flower.

These verses, which come to us by way of Emily Brontë and the history woven into her surname, light candles in a shadowy world. She and her sister Anne are the subjects of this wordless tribute, evoked through the strings of Charlie Rauh’s acoustic guitar. Recorded in the very home where he learned the instrument, The Bluebell is more than a collection of miniatures (each track averages about a minute and half) inspired by poetry. Rather, they are devotionals bound by the metaphysical leather of tribute, meditation, and emotional transference.

Two versions of the title track, one drawn from the veins of each sister, are as genetically distinct as they are seamless. Not only do we feel the stem, leaves, and petals of this bulbous hyacinth, but are more importantly lured by its fragrance. Indeed, scent abounds in the source texts, which Rauh inhales as inspiration and exhales through the compact wonders of “Watch Through The Darkest Hours Of Night” with nary an errant note.

Whether channeling doubts of biblical proportion in “Though Weak Yet Longing To Believe” or donning the protection of divine assurance in “Faith Shines Equal Arming Me From Fear,” the sentiments at hand show that such armor, known only to the God in whose name it is worn, is hidden from view, girded as it is about the soul. And so, if the feelings of uncertainty we encounter in “Careless Gifts Are Seldom Prized” are indicative of anything, it is that wisdom is made manifest in holy illumination. And as reflections of time in “We Were Not Once So Few” spread horizontally into the vertical regard of “With Purpose Pure And High,” we find ourselves alone yet unafraid. Only in that state of openness can we accept “A Little And A Lone Green Lane” as a reminder that our flesh is but the garment of pilgrims passing through.

And yet, the bluebell still stands, head bowed as if in prayer, holding on to its hymn of persistence. Thus, these melodies stare poignantly into the eyes of decay and smile as if to say, “It’s easy to hear music in the poetry. Let us never forget to hear poetry in the music.”