There's a great story and an even better idea behind In the Cool of the Day. Not too long ago, Kentucky-born singer-songwriter Daniel Martin Moore rolled through WXVU Radio in Cincinnati to play a studio session and give an interview. Totally routine. But when Moore sat down at the old Steinway piano they kept in-house, his head and heart went wild. Apparently Moore had been thinking of making a gospel record for sometime, an album comprised of new original material as well as standards he remembered hearing and singing while growing up in Cold Spring. That piano, for whatever reason, brought it all home.
Moore did something smart here: Rather than record straight covers of these songs, he tried to arrange and play them impressionistically, as he remembered them and as shaped by his feelings on spirituality now. In addition, he contributed four similarly inspired gospels songs of his own. The result is a very warm, very welcoming entry point for anyone interested in the gospel tradition. Though this album doesn't remain entirely faithful to the original source material's every layer, it does stay true to the feeling behind that music. That's a very special thing.
It also sounds fantastic. Moore enlisted the help of several of his friends to bring the project into being, two of which are My Morning Jacket's Jim James on banjo (credited here as Yim Yames) and drummer Daniel Joseph Dorff, who took over at the aforementioned, mystical, nine-foot Steinway that set the project in motion. Everything here sounds as though it was recorded live with minimal overdubs, and though the feel is loose, all these players also sound like they've been playing together for years. Moore has an impossibly soothing voice (former lablemate and tourmate Sam Beam is of a similar feather) and the lighter fare, most of which can be found on the record's first half, can take on a coffee shop/Jack Johnson in Appalachia feel at times.
Shuffles like "In the Garden" or Moore's take on Jean Ritchie's "In the Cool of the Day" are fully reclined and although they've got a great energy, those songs with a bit more shadow stand out the most. And with the exception of the mandolin-and banjo-laced "Up Above My Head", the majority of those songs were authored by Moore. One minute opener "All Ye Tenderhearted" is a brief acoustic inhale whose beauty is matched again, but only by the piano and hush of Moore's "O My Soul". Lyrically he stitches everything up quietly by referencing the titles and themes of other songs found here, the latter's chorus a nod to the same Jean Ritchie track noted above.
In that vein, the arrangements here are also uniformly gorgeous. But the conceptual framework is a much harder sell considering the Christian backdrop. Personally, I didn't grow up in a house where faith or religion played much of a role, save for a reason for Mom and Dad to argue at dinner (she's Catholic, he's Methodist). But religious music was never a hot button issue, and at no point does this, Moore's latest, feel like anything other than an honest expression of love. And, to close like a nerd as much as anything else: this isn't a headphones listen. It's music with which to fill a room or, even better, a home.
