Carbon Leaf Countdown #47: Follow The Lady
Jan 18
Carbon Leaf’s monumental 2001 release Echo Echo gets its first entry into the top 50. At #47, it’s “Follow The Lady!”
Echo Echo is amazing. Seriously. Just amazing. It’s easily the best Carbon Leaf album and my pick for the best album released in 2001 period (look for yourself here). I’m sure I’ll be talking about the album more as there are definitely many more songs to pop on the list here, but I’ll just say it again: Echo Echo is amazing. “Follow The Lady” is a song…well, first let’s talk about that bass. There’s a lot of talk about mandolins, banjos, pennywhistles, and other cool instruments that Carbon Leaf utilizes from time to time. Hell, all of them pretty much show up in here perfectly. But the bass in this song is ridiculous. I sometimes find myself struggling not to sing along to the song just so I can enjoy the bass more and more. It’s going to sound weird, but the bass is literally like the backing vocal of the song to me. It adds more depth, clarity, and voice to the song while supporting it rhythmically as well. Of course, there’s that amazing bass breakdown followed by all the instruments going nuts too. Yeah, I really like the bass in this song.
I got to be fair though. The instrumentation in the song itself is just pure straight fun whether it’s from the mandolin, guitar, drums, pennywhistle, or that darn bass. It’s almost ironic too. Barry croons “I mind” over and over again, but who really minds with all this great melodies, rhythms, patterns, what-have-you in the song? Lyrically, Barry is as strong as ever here talking about being under the trance of a lady with some cool lyrics to back it up. “In this dark, flint a spark. Shady lady, it glows out of you.” That’s just a fun lyric to follow around through the song…if only the bass part wasn’t that much more fun. Sorry Barry. God, you know what the best part is? This song is not even in the top 5 songs from this album. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover people.
Song: Follow The Lady
Album: Echo Echo
Year: 2001
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Jan 19, 2012 @ 22:51:21
Happy to see this song make the top 50 – it is an uplifting, feel good song
Jan 24, 2012 @ 07:21:46
I was shocked that this song didn’t rank higher on the list. This is my favorite CL song. I love the funky arrangement. After listening to this song hundreds of times, it can still give me goosebumps!
Jan 31, 2012 @ 21:02:06
The bass work in general on Echo Echo is superb and it solidified my liking of the band. I’ve always wondered if Alan Moore’s ‘Pog’ story in the ‘Swamp Thing’ comic had anything to do with this tune (This tune and a starship in the story share the same complete name).