Local Review: Melissa Chilinski – Melissa Chilinski

Melissa Chilinski
Melissa Chilinski
Self-Released
Street: 05.17.2024
Melissa Chilinski = Gillian Welch + Madeleine Peyroux + Patsy Cline

Melissa Chilinski is a wunderkind. Her live shows are an event. With the release of her self-titled album, Chilinski combines elements of Appalachian music, bluegrass, country and Americana like Gillian Welch. She also adds touches of jazz and blues like Madeleine Peyroux. Melissa Chilinski’s earthy vocals are coarse, breathy and beautiful like Norah Jones mixed with a little rich, cowgirl soul like Patsy Cline. 

It’s impossible not to hang onto every word and turn of phrase. Listening to Melissa Chilinski is like a sitting around a campfire: warm and welcoming, with a little bit of a wild side as the night goes on. For the album, Chilinski has surrounded herself with elite musicians that provide oxygen and gravity for whatever world she chooses to create.

The first track “Blind Miner” is about James Leroy “Roy” Newman who lost his eyesight after a dynamite accident mining in Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Mountains. He worked the mine for at least 45 years. “On the 99th day of solitude / Snow piling high on the ground / The breeze doesn’t make a sound / Inside the mine,” Chilinski sings, with a haunting banjo and a slicing old-time bluegrass fiddle: “Cold can’t cut your finger tips / Digging deep beneath the earth / Searching for your self worth / Inside the mine.” 

“Blind Miner” is a beautiful echo to the story of a man who spent his entire life digging into the belly of a mountain. “The blackness came to Roy one day / As a blasting shook and took his eyes away / And dreams of blue skies / Faded to gray,” she sings. The track is a master class in musicianship and storytelling. You can almost breathe in the rock dust air.

Chilinski’s amazing voice reverberates down the Utah canyons like a cool breeze in any season. “As the winter turns to spring / Did you notice the poppies blossoming / Did you notice how the winds they changed / Or how the leaves are arranged,” Chilinski sings on “Poor Flowers.” She continues this theme on the track “Slipping into Seasons”: “Tulips start unfurling / Bees a-buzzin’ and a-swirlin’ / Around the blossoms blowing colors / Against the sky.”

And for every spring, we have a fall. Chilinski continues, “While the days keep slipping into season / The nights get darker for a reason / To help us rest a little more.” Melissa Chilinski sings between the equinox and the solstice in a seasonal creep that unfolds with a steady grace and quiet poetry.

On the final track “Morning Prine,” Chilinski channels John Prine in a way that nods to his odd, subtle brilliance and adds another layer to his sweet, biting melancholy song writing style: “Clever enough to always check the weather / But you’ve got to remember / The feel of stormy pleasure / Left out in the rain and snow / Together.” The track is like strawberry ice cream. “Love me, why don’t you hug me / Why don’t you kiss me / Like we’d all prefer / Well I know you’ve been thinking of me / Of being above me / Until we’re buried in the dirt,” she sings. Gorgeous.

John Muir once said: “Between every two pine trees, there is a door leading to a new way of life.” Chilinski lives between the pine trees. Her songs change you. Chilinski is in the bloodstream of our state. She is in the hills, in the cities, in the desert and in the ski towns, in the downtown venues and the Cosmic Hootenanny. She has delivered her first full-length, self-titled album, and it is as perfect as Pompe n’ Honey.

It’s an album about mornings, evenings and seasons, love and reverie, feathers in the wind, and a miner deep in the canyon. It’s perfect. Buy this record. See her live and embrace her talent. Meet her between the pines. —Russ Holsten

Read more local album reviews here:
Local Review: MOCOSOS — RE DEMO
Local Review: Rachael Jenkins — The End