To get down to brass tacks, India Ramey is the real deal.
If 2024’s ‘Baptized By The Blaze’ was her personal growth album, this is the Nashville siren’s statement of independence as a woman healed.
She says defiantly ”I’ve spent the last few years finding my authentic self, reclaiming my identity. I’m not going to suffer fools anymore. I’m not compromising anymore. If my boundaries offend you, I’ll happily play the villain in that story.” In other words, as she sings in Nobody’s Coming , “my salvation’s up to me.”
Her sixth album was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Eric Corne who was given the brief that it should sound like Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn scoring a Quentin Tarantino film.
The revenge drama of We Ride At Dawn lays down the marker: “we’ll see those bandits in hell” she vows and woe betide anyone who doubts her resolve.
Being unlucky in love doesn’t leave her downcast but merely confirms her disdain towards potential suitors. Breakup tunes like Cryin’ In My Lingerie and Red Red Roses, are more celebratory than disconsolate.
Meanwhile, heartbreak is cured by booze in Scattered And Smothered and is followed by a hangover cure of ”hash browns and scrambled eggs”.
Her fine backing band soundtrack her sassy energy effectively. They are Ted Russell Kamp on bass, Eugene Edwards and Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle, Kevin Brown on drums, Boo Bernstein on pedal steel, and Haley Spence Brown on backing vocals.
The end result is a fine collection of ten Honky Tonk vignettes built around spaghetti western narratives and infused with an infectious mix of rockabilly swagger and modern twang.
