Now, "sunny" isn't usually the first word that comes up in a discussion of Gillian's music. Maybe "partly cloudy" is a better fit for Soul Journey, the latest from this gifted singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. After all, it offers much of what we've come to associate with her style, stark but powerful stories set to music whose bare intensity conveys an almost unbearable beauty.

Truly, there are moments on Soul Journey that do stand in a brighter light. Perhaps this reflects Gillian's own feelings about Soul Journey, which is her most intimate and direct album to date. "There's a plain-spoken and straightforward quality to it," she explains, "compared to the other records. And while everything I've done has been fairly autobiographical, it's also been more obscure. In fact, some of the songs on Soul Journey I never even intended to release; they were kind of recorded for myself"

Gillian is referring in particular to the solo tracks on Soul Journey – her adaptations of two traditional songs, "Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor" and "I Had a Real Good Mother and Father," as well as the original "One Little Song." She waited for this, her fourth album, to feature her first completely unaccompanied performances.

The rest of Soul Journey offers a variety of settings, from unplugged assemblies of dobro, fiddle, and guitar to the closing track, "Wrecking Ball," whose picturesque lyrics ride a steady acoustic/electric crescendo. The musicians who join in on these tracks -- Gillian refers to them fondly as "a reliably unpredictable bunch" -- include Son Volt bassist Jim Boquist, dobro player Greg Leisz, fiddler Ketch Secor, and guitarist Mark Ambrose. She and Rawlings played everything else, including drums, organ, and additional guitars, with Rawlings producing.

Premonitions of what would make Soul Journey unique came early in the writing cycle. "This time I tried not to be the editor that I usually am. It was more like opening up the inside of my head and dumping whatever was in there onto the paper. To me, this means that these songs have retained their original kernel. This record may be closer to the kind of music I really like than anything else I've put out."

Gillian and David rushed into 2003 in a whirlwind of concentrated writing. When some early recording yielded three unexpectedly powerful solo performances, Soul Journey had begun. The band was called in to cut everything else in early March. In four days they finished six cuts, took a few days more to finish the last one … and that was it.

Perhaps the best example of what can happen under these conditions is "Wrecking Ball," whose soaring dynamics and inspired interplay recall classic moments from Dylan and the Band. "It was really just a jam," Gillian remembers. "There was hardly a form to work with; the song just barely existed. But that's the kind of intensity we got all week, working sixteen hours a day. We just played. I did the vocals live, with the band. We didn't even listen to playbacks; we just kept going."

Gillian smiles. "To me, that means, first of all, that the spirit of the performance transcends the notes themselves. I don't like to see musicians reading charts in the studio. It's better if everyone is playing, listening … even guessing. That's when good things happen."

Soul Journey rose from this turbulence, like a light breaking through a fabric of mist. The record may not represent an end, or even a new beginning, for Gillian. Certainly her fans can count on many more duets from her and David, on record and on stages, for many years yet. But for all that she will achieve in her lifetime, Soul Journey will surely be seen as unlike anything else she has done -- something similar enough to her other work to meet expectations, though also revealing, if only for a moment, the shadows and, sure enough, the sunshine that lies within this artist's soul.