Amy LaVere – Anchors & Anvils
This review comes your way courtesy of new podcast (sorry, they’re a radio show, I know, but I listen to the podcast) The Waiting Room. I heard this on their show a couple of weeks back and bought the album. Smart move.
Although at times it can be a little bit too country for me, this is nevertheless a terrific album. There’s an old time jazz songstress wrestling the country crooner for supremacy too, which puts this record somewhere inbetween Eleni Mandell, Jenny Lewis and Holly Cole’s album of Tom Waits covers in terms of sound. The scraping violin is just about my favourite part of this album, and is faintly burlesque in some ways, a tendency hinted at by the be-sequined gun LaVere holds on the album cover.
The stories tend to be either grotesques or cliches, based on all the old classic staples of country music – true love, infidelity, drink and murder. It’s a theatrical record, one full to bursting with every aspect of old-fashioned music that can be taken and cranked up just that little bit extra, to create an album that is at once the slightest of parodies and also a devoted homage. So if you can take this level of country, I’d definitely give this one a go. Gorgeous.
Amy LaVere – Overcome
Amy LaVere – Pointless Drinking
website | hype | buy the album
She’s got this great track, based on those old country staples you mentioned, called “Killing Him.” Guess what it’s about?
I think the line is, “killing him didn’t make the love go away,” great track.
Yes, it’s such a cliche but she manages to make it never sound like one. Is pastiche perhaps the right word?
Yeah, I really enjoy what I’ve heard of Anchors and Anvils.