Music Review: Wild Carrot's "Hope"
TheChattanoogan.com Happenings, October 8, 2003

Wild Carrot
Hope
Falling Mountain Music

“How we gonna fix this thing/ All you’ve got’s tape, all I’ve got’s string/ And what we need more than anything/ Is real, real love.”

With these lines, Wild Carrot brings you into their world. It’s a world made up of predicament, the desire to move on and the realization of what it will take to get there. Throughout Hope, this folk duo made up of Pamela Temple (vocals, guitar, concertina, penny whistle and bowed psaltery) and Spencer Funk (vocals, guitar and mandolin) does what folk music does best – tells stories. Not only does each song tell a story, but a brief synopsis of each tune is provided in the liner notes for background information as well.

This album has what it takes to please all types of folk music fans. The opening track, “Real Love,” is a slow and thoughtful tune. It is immediately followed by the raw and fairly rambunctious “Bitter Blood,” which tells the story of a woman who is “carrying [the] seed” of the man who has just left her.

In every song, what stands out more than anything is the crisp instrumentation that accompanies Temple’s endearing vocals and Funk’s background vocals – which, by the way, are always right on target.
The concept of the album as a whole is centered on Emily Dickinson’s poems “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” and “Hope Is a Subtle Glutton,” which the pair adapts and adds to for the album’s title song. When the disc stops spinning, you’re left with a gentle burst of hope, and don’t we all need a little sometimes?

Finally…Wild Carrot can soothe your aching ears as well as delight you with stories of quiet, healing men and Earth-bound heroes. If it sounds like your cup of tea, log on to www.wildcarrot.net and ask for your copy of Hope.

– Daniel Brantley, daniel.brantley@truenorthcustom.com