Jude Brothers’ gorgeously pastoral third album ‘Dogwood Maiden Voyage’ is a remarkable achievement

Northwest Arkansas folk artist Jude Brothers’ new album begins with an 11-minute-long epic set in the underworld, ends with a six-minute stunner recorded with audible nature sounds throughout, and in between contains three a capella songs recorded inside the historic Winslow Train Tunnel in Washington County. And yet, the miraculous “Dogwood Maiden Voyage” — out today via Gar Hole Records — is the most approachable and direct album of Brothers’ career, a gorgeous ode to the beauty and belonging of the natural world shot through with the grief of witnessing its ending.  

This is music for long walks in the woods at golden hour, for dancing at your uncle’s birthday party in the Shire, for the moment when the campfire has begun to dwindle and the darkness of the forest begins to encroach. It is a masterful exploration of the way nature provides a place of belonging for those who may not find that in more human realms. Like so much great art, it sounds at once singular and universal.  

In contrast to Brothers’ previous releases, which sought to capture their intricate harp playing and striking voice with raw immediacy — ”Just set up the mics in a pretty place, blast through a few takes, and release a live-sounding rendition of each song,” Brothers said of their earlier recording style — “Dogwood Maiden Voyage” was recorded in multiple locations over three years and adds fiddle, upright bass and backing vocals to Brothers’ already potent formula. The result is an album that sounds immaculate and expansive without losing the homespun intimacy of their earlier work. 

This new fullness is immediately apparent on the album’s lead single “Treat Me Like a Tree & Love Me For My Crookedness,” a languid and lovely country-folk song that would sound right at home on a Gillian Welch record (I do not make that comparison lightly). The addition of string arrangements is not an afterthought but an essential compliment to the songwriting, with my favorite little moment being the strings performing a liquidy flourish just as Brothers sings “I’ll treat you like a stream.”

Elsewhere, the strings — fiddle from Patrick Mcgonigle and upright bass from Geoff Henderson — play a diverse set of roles thoughtfully deployed: the showstopping wail of a solo toward the end of “Desire & Devotion,” a jaunty preview of the vocal melody to open “Magpie & Birch,” a frenzied undercurrent to Brothers’ angelic harmonies at the climax of “Mockingbird & The Meadowlark.” 

But always nestled within the lush foliage of these additions and Brothers’ own considerable instrumental talents is their honeyed voice, capable in turns of seductive playfulness, wistful longing and spectral otherworldliness. Brothers’ vocals often acts as an anchor to songs that meander like trails bending back across each other’s path, repeating and returning to melodies and phrasings that lend structure to the songs without requiring them to adhere to traditional verse-chorus-verse parameters.  

It is obvious but apt to compare the harp-playing, poetically-inclined Brothers to the reverend mother of freak folk, Joanna Newsom. While they certainly share both a pastoral musical sensibility and an affinity for dense, knotty lyrics, there is a deeper connection here in both artists’ profound connection to the natural world as well as their off-kilter way of describing it. 

In fact, lyrics from Newsom’s song-of-the-century contender “Emily” summarize the thematic throughline of “Dogwood Maiden Voyage” better than I ever could. In that song, Newsom’s narrator stares at the sky above and sings “Joy / Landlocked in bodies that don’t keep / Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being / Till we don’t be.” 

The songs of “Dogwood Maiden Voyage” are without exception dumbstruck with the sweetness of being, tackling human concerns such as belonging, desire and death without ever losing sight of the larger natural world that decentralizes those human concerns into part of a much larger, mesmerizing whole. Each song’s title is composed of two words or phrases connected by an ampersand, perhaps a signifier of the inextricable connection between humans and the natural world, and of both the good and the bad inherent in that connection (the ampersands also serve as an interesting contrast to the slashes in the song titles of her previous album, if you want to get really far into the weeds). 

It’s also worth noting that these are often long songs on a long album, but it rarely feels as long as it is because of added diversity of instrumentation, Brothers’ elliptical songwriting and the presence of the three a capella tunes interspersed throughout like a spectral Greek chorus. Instead of slogging along, the album builds momentum toward its powerful two-song conclusion, which seems to serve as a mission statement for “Dogwood Maiden Voyage” and Brothers’ entire discography. 

The penultimate track, “I’m Gonna Build a Life I Don’t Wanna Escape From & It’s Gonna Be Beautiful,” is a stunning ode to self-discovery, with Brothers remembering themselves as “a filthy feral darling, just digging, crawling, snarling / Before I wore a girl’s disguise” before casting off the shackles of gender and setting out “on a mission to grant that critter’s wishing / And see that mystery abounds.” 

The transition between that song’s titular mantra of “I’m gonna build a life I don’t wanna escape from!” and the beginning of the closing track is my favorite moment on the album, the ecstasy of Brothers’ revelation giving way to the bug chirp and night sounds that accompany them on “Small Gods & Grief Portals.” 

Between incantatory lists of plants and herbs that sounds like Brothers gathering the ingredients for a spell or poultice, the song shifts to a direct address that beautifully and succinctly captures the burden of existing in the modern world: “I don’t know how to live anymore / Nothing’s like it was before / Tell me clearly, for I’m weary.”  

I listened to this album while passing the concrete expanse of a new Buc-ee’s standing where forest once stood, and I listened to it while walking through still-standing forest as the sun set. I listened to it during an unholy streak of 100-degree September days and I listened to it while the sun rose on the first cool morning that actually felt like fall. I listened to it while mourning endings and while celebrating beginnings. 

“Dogwood Maiden Voyage” and its ampersands lovingly capture these contradicting beauties of modern life, never shying away from the shadows that must exist alongside light. It is a remarkable achievement from an artist working at the height of their powers.