Amy McCarley's full length debut album is an emotionally bleak affair albeit delivered with a measure of integrity.
The double negative in the first line of the opening song (Long Way Home) gives fair warning that she is not a fair weather singer. With a world-weary Southern drawl she sings "It's a long way home, but that don't mean I don't wanna go".
In track two (Midnight Gown) she sings "I'm just a ghost in my personal history". In this song she's happy when it rains and even in the relatively optimistic Everything Changed you don't get the feeling that the sunny mood is going to last all that long.
At least on Every Which Way a would be lover gets an invitation to the beach (or her room) but the ominous message of Faster Than Truth is that the truth always catches up with you sooner or later.
|
McCarley is from Huntsville, Alabama and is very much in the tradition of the telling it like it is school of female Alt.Country singer-songwriters like Lucinda Williams an Gillian Welch (the one cover song here is of Welch's Look At Miss Ohio).
Like those artists, she's not about to pretend that life is a bed of roses and all the songs are delivered with an air of resignation and cynicism.
The brief glimmers of light don't brighten her relentlessly dour mood and makes the forty five minutes a hard slog for the listener.
Amy McCarley's website
|
