"Porch music with a little red dirt" is this Canadian singer songwriter's calling card. For her latest collection she jousts with the grim reaper by penning seven murder ballads (or reckoning songs) as reminders that "death's gonna get us all".
Despite this potentially morbid content, the mood is anything but funereal. The blues meets bluegrass arrangements ensure the stories of bloody deeds are rendered with a swing together with more than a hint of gallows humour.
Compared with Nick Cave's treatment of similar subject matter this is positively light and cheery as though mocking rather than fearing the devil's handiwork. This is especially true of the lively rockabilly on First One's Free.
This track, the closing tune, is indicative of the fact that, for the most part, Hanson prefers theatrical melodrama to gothic horror.
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You find a similar spirit on Black Widow, the tale of a woman who literally gets away with murder and My Mamma Said which is described as "a dark story about a killer that even a mother couldn't love".
A nice contrast to the up-tempo rhythms comes on a spare arrangement (just guitar and pocket trumpet) for Cecil Hotel which tells of a man on the run after killing a banker - "I sleep with one eye open and a shotgun by my head".
The mix and match elements all make for a disarming sense of variety to add a little spice of life to these death songs.
Lynne Hanson's website
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