By Jaya Gupta
Special to the Daily Press

At the end of the day, musician Eliza Gilkyson is yet another person worried about the world’s current state of affairs.

Gilkyson, unlike most others, has examined and transcribed her concern into grassroots, folk music on her latest record “Paradise Hotel.”

With a smoky, almost raspy voice reminiscent of Emmylou Harris, Gilkyson sings an introspective and politically-active story on “Paradise Hotel” that begins at the Revolutionary War.

“Jedidiah 1777” is a biographical song recounting some of the trying circumstances her ancestral grandfather Brigadier General Jedidiah Huntington endured while fighting alongside George Washington in the historic war securing America’s independence. The warm timbre of Gilkyson’s voice backed by a careful, portending instrumentation makes for a haunting, intriguing song.

Her story winds toward the present with “Man of God,” boldly challenging the current administration’s use of religion to sell national policies to the public. It is an unsparing, sarcastic and highly-derisive recount of President Bush and his cabinet.

While “Paradise Hotel” is largely pervaded by a feeling of impending danger, the ominousness takes a forlorn and wholly personal form in “Bellarosa.” Gilkyson sings in Spanish about how she will remember a single, fleeting summer day spent with her granddaughter when the world begins collapsing around her. Backed by a Spanish guitar, the song is spare and contemplative, with none of its emotional power lost in translation.

Following up her 2004 Grammy-nominated effort entitled “Land of Milk and Honey,” Gilkyson’s latest offering is both sobering and haunting. She adeptly cuts the heaviness of the album’s main subject matter with tracks like “Borderline” about a high school love and “Paradise Hotel,” a beautiful and resignedly hopeful title song.

It might sound as if Gilkyson holds an overwhelmingly bleak vision of the future. If the fact that the record is named after “Paradise Hotel” means anything, Gilkyson is worried yet conservatively optimistic about the state of our world’s affairs.

Eliza Gilkyson hits up McCabe’s, Jan. 21st at 8 p.m. McCabe’s is located at 3101 Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica. For more information, call (310) 828-4497.