This is an absolutely gorgeous double-cd collection of songs recorded at the Attic in Boulder, Colorado in the nighttime, 1962. You can feel the atmosphere in the room ? they?re hanging on every syllable Dalton utters, her breath is keeping the whole space together, transfixed on the songs as they emerge, fully formed and free?the songs here breathe so terribly honestly. She accompanies her dark, straight and fucking beautifully true voice with either 12-string acoustic or banjo, picking out the kind of melodies (especially on banjo picked super songs like ?Mole in the Ground?) that make you ache to be there. Her legendary arrangements amaze time after time ? Woody Guthrie?s ?Pastures of Plenty?, Ray Charles? ?It?s Alright?, they all sound utterly embedded in the singer?s life, her own experience ? but whether or not the person of Dalton, her actual self, is in these songs or not is beside the point, because she brings their characters, tragedies, scope and joy straight into instant unfolding existence. She sees it happening, it?s happening to her ? whatever, it?s there, right in front of your ears, she brings it to you. Greil Marcus on the difference between the songs and ballads of Harry Smith?s Anthology of American Folk Music was this difference in self-absorption - that it was the song out of which the singer emerges, and the ballad into which they disappear. Now these tapes reveal a Dalton that is constantly emerging and disappearing ? I mean, when she sings ?It Hurts Me Too?, you?ve no fucking doubt that she?s in pain; she almost bleeds that song out. And yet she?s got no claim over the songs, her I is everywhere ? she?s the mole in the ground, she?s Katie Cruel, and she?s Karen Dalton, doing it with that voice like a valley. She never resolves the paradox, and she keeps that mystery from which truth emerges, what Dylan was saying about the sheer weirdness of the old songs, how they?ll keep themselves. And she makes new songs sound as old or as timeless as the ones passed down through generations. She?s a folk singer. Or maybe just a singer. Absolutely essential. 10/10 -- Evan Rhodes (5 September, 2007)