By DJ Monk
Eileen Rose is a singer-songwriter from Nashville, in the good ol’ state of Tennessee, who experienced something of what she describes as a “creative avalanche” in 2019, writing and publishing two novels and also heading down the freeway to Alabama to record this epic double album collection at the legendary Muscle Shoal studios (well, it’s title sort of gives that connection away, doesn’t it?).
Rose has a reputation for dabbling in the more experimental, bluesier and rockier sides of the country genre in which she has actually made her name: her debut album, released exactly two decades ago, was recorded with Alabama 3, and immediately cemented her place as an artist prepared to push the envelope just that little bit further than those inhabiting the same musical territory, while at the same time openly inhabiting that with purists will be more than familiar.
Take opener ‘She’s Gone’, the first of the seven new songs (plus two covers) which make up the ‘A side’ of this collection: it’s a song which echoes Joplin and Smith as much as it does Emmylou Harris or Dolly Parton (I bet that’s a pair of names you never thought you’d see in these pages), the beautiful, understated use of the organ and slide guitar perfectly underpinning the rawness of Rose’s distinctive vocal delivery.
Now, I mentioned that Rose is not afraid to push the envelope, and she does that with the first of the two cover versions included on the first disc… Did you ever think you would hear a “country” artist take on a King Crimson track? No? Neither did I, but Rose does that as she presents a wonderfully laconic version of ‘Matte Kudasai’, defying expectations in every department with a faithful and affectionate interpretation, made all the more impressive by the transference to a female vocal, which lends a totally different aspect to the song’s impact and tonality.
Rose’s rockier side comes to the fore on the Fogarty/Petty-esque ‘Get Up’, with its underlying Pretenders style spunky energy, before she plunges straight back into her Americana/country roots with the lament ‘Am I Really So Bad?’ and the pure suvern stomp of ‘On Shady Hill’ and its companion ‘A Little Too Loud’, which would sit comfortably alongside anything in the boul’ Dolly’s less commercial canon (seriously, folks, step away from the faux titties and the over-produced stage persona, and Ms Parton knows how to write an incisive lyric, as the Dark Queen has enlightened me).
The album’s most spine-tingling moment comes in Side A closer ‘The Old Triangle’, an awesome and extremely powerful a cappella rendition of Irish revolutionary poet Brendan Behan’s jailhouse lament: drawing as much on Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn as it does Sinead O’Connor, Dolores O’Riordan and Maire Brennan, it is simply a totally stunning performance that makes you stop in your tracks and just admire the sheer quality of the voice delivering the impassioned lyric.
The second CD, or ‘Side B’, is recordings of ten songs from Rose’s two-decades worth of back catalogue, which will make it of interest to avid collectors and purists, as well as helping to introduce new fans brought to her by this new album to what has gone before. By its very nature, it offers nothing new, as all of the songs have been released before, but it does showcase the richness of her song writing ability, especially on the likes of the cheeky “chicks can’t play the blues” defiance of ‘Rose’, the melancholic Faithfull/Ravan moulding of ‘Stagger Home’ and the Wilburys-meets-GoGos staccato pump of ‘Queen Of The Fake Smile’.
In these chaotic days of lockdowns and their inevitable consequences, ‘Muscle Shoals’ is the sort of album that, despite many of the melancholic themes it explores, that cannot fail to brighten your life for a couple of hours.
- ‘Muscle Shoals’ is released on 17 April. You can get your copy HERE.
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