Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Reestablish That, in the Realm of Acoustic Music, Nobody Does It Better: Concert Review

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Are we in a golden age for acoustic music? You’d just about have to think so, if you are privy to a couple of significant tours coming through California right now, one by the duo of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, another by solo artist Jason Isbell, trading coastal cities like capos at a guitar pull.

Isbell has been in the review headlines, shining a light on just how good lonesome finger-picking can sound on record with his first band-less album, “Foxes in the Snow.” But the Los Angeles re-arrival of Welch and Rawlings — who are more than six months into touring behind their excellent 2024 joint effort, “Woodland” — is a reminder not just of what an influence they’ve surely been on someone like Isbell, but how they remain the unshakable queen and king of this idiom.

Of course, while Isbell and some of their other contemporaries might dip their toes in and out of a purely acoustic mode, Welch and Rawlings have been keeping it quiet for close to 30 years now.

Every once in a while, they threaten to go electric, in their own still-modest fashion, but thankfully, it never quite seems to completely take.