Diane Cluck | Boneset [ALBUM REVIEW]

Diane Cluck plays music she describes as “intuitive folk” while others put her music under umbrella terms like “freak folk” or “anti-folk”, but I’m pretty sure that as she releases her seventh album, Boneset, she plays exactly what you think of when you hear “folk music”. It’s the kind of straight-up-folk-music born out of the exhaust pipe of Joni Mitchell’s big yellow taxicab. To try and label this something other than what it really is speaks to the idea of false modernization, when there really isn’t much difference when it’s still the signer/songwriter crooning their turmoils of the heart and the surrounding world with mainly just an acoustic guitar. There’s something very risky for an artist to bare themselves like this, but it can also be terrifically boring. Boneset does not sound like a seasoned folk artist, nor does it sound like a young hungry voice, it’s somewhere in the middle which can be terribly infuriating to listen to. The most interesting parts of Boneset are the occasional times she shows lyrical prowess with some clever stanzas and haunting cello that follows her voice like a shadow; but those moments are few, and on an eight-song album that’s under 22 minutes, they’ve already vanished before you realize it.