Oregon native RACHEL HARRINGTON has received a sizeable bushel of plaudits from W&H over the past few years. We missed her debut, 2007’s ‘The Bootlegger’s Daughter’, but were thrilled by the depth of feeling and attention to detail her patented brand of highly authentic, pre-Depression era country/ folk stylings proffered on 2008’s ‘City of Refuge’ and 2010’s ‘Celilo Falls.’
Anyone expecting a further bout of sepia-tinted, old-time Americana will be shocked by her latest, ‘Rachel Harrington & The Knock Outs,’ however. Actually, make that surprised and delighted, for while it drags Harrington’s pre-WW2 muse kicking and screaming into, well, the late 1960s/ early 1970s (if not quite the 21st Century), she wears the makeover with style to spare.
As the title suggests, ‘Rachel Harrington & The Knock Outs’ is a group effort. While all the tracks are either solo Harrington compositions or co-writes, The Knock Outs are something of a revelation. An all-female unit, with guitarist Moe Provencher, bassist Rebecca Young, drummer Aimee Tubbs and fiddler Alisa Milner skilfully augmenting Harrington’s guitar and vocals, they capture that elusive, loosely-funky swagger that the best bar-room roots-rockers (from Green on Red to Danny & The Champions of the World) seem to have inherited without even trying.
Recorded at Seattle’s respected Avast studios (Soundgarden, Fleet Foxes) with long-time acolyte Evan Brubaker at the controls, ‘...The Knock Outs’ is live, sassy and colourful. High-octane, Burritos-style garage-roots anthem ‘Makin’ Our Home A Honky-tonk’ (“playin’ Hank and Loretta...it don’t get any better”) gets the party started in style, while the punchy, bar-room brawler ‘He’s My Man’ sears its way into your brain within seconds of first hearing and ‘Nothin’ To Do But You’ is built around strident, Keef-esque riffing, strutting drums and a fine, throaty Harrington vocal. ‘Hippie In My House’, meanwhile, may be an irreverent commentary on alternative lifestyles (“now there are some funny lookin’ plants growin’ in the back yard”) but it swings like a good ‘un regardless.
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For all the immediacy, though, ‘...The Knock Outs’ is still ready for the country. The beautifully poised ‘Love Him or Leave Him to Me’ (“only you can be faithful to your golden wedding ring”) and the unusually pragmatic wife-dun-wrong scenario ‘Wedding Ring Vacation’ (“I’m making the best of a bad situation...puttin’ this heartache on probation”) delve vividly into affairs of the heart gone awry, while ‘I’ll Show You Mine’ is a classy duet with Mark Erelli playing Gram to Rachel’s Emmy Lou. Arguably best of all is the closing ‘I’d Like To Take This Chance’: classic, God-fearing country a la Patsy Cline with temptation and redemption slugging it out (“when I lay my eyes on you, so help me God”) over an absolute honey of a tune.
‘Rachel Harrington & The Knock Outs’ is right to present itself as a self-titled affair as, to all intents and purposes, it might as well be a debut album. Its sparky, roots-rockin’ approach may catch long-term devotees of her high lonesome Appalachian folk unaware, but the more open-minded roots fans will surely roll with the punches and simply enjoy it for what it is: a finely-tuned and thoroughly well-executed album clocking in at a just-right 30 minutes.
Rachel Harrington online
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