Laurelyn Dossett sings in layers.
“She can’t speak, but she can cry / she can’t fight, but she can die,” Dossett sings over a melancholy groove on “The River’s Lament.” “Poisoned on a winter’s day / while we looked the other way.” The rural North Carolina songwriter sings about a coal ash spill in her state’s Dan River in February 2014 (as she calls it, “winter’s coal-black tragedy”). “The River’s Lament” is specific enough to refer to one poisoned river, yet figurative enough to apply to any troubled waterway. It’s a folk song, useful to anyone who needs it.
“And we gather at the river / and we stand along her shore,” Dossett sings. “And we promise not to hurt her anymore.”
