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

This is a bit of a mutual back-scratching exercise, so I thought I’d better confess my motives up front, but I think you all know me well enough to know I’d never plug something I didn’t genuinely like. The Waiting Room is a two-hour weekly podcast by a couple of muppets who actually give the shambolic disorganisation of the Toadcasts a run for their money in terms of sheer haphazard bumbling. [Edit: Sorry, they are a radio show that is also a podcast.  Broadcasts from Error FM, Wednesdays from 10pm. I think it's 10pm - I just listen to the podcasts myself.] One half of Drunk Country and Ms. Hope Eternal chatter on about not very much in particular and present some truly excellent song choices.

In the three episodes I’ve heard they’ve played the likes of Noah & the Whale, Man Man, The Magnetic Fields, Alaska in Winter, King Creosote and The Czars who are Toad favourites and also led me to buy albums by Rats With Wings, Jesca Hoop and Amy LaVere. So well worth checking out. Also, they said I was ace in their last podcast and with my colossal vanity, flattery of that sort was bound to be rewarded.

Rats With Wings – Hungry Like the Wolf Yes, that Hungry Like the Wolf.
The Czars – Lullaby 6000 This songs ends with one of the most gorgeous building choruses ever.
Amy LaVere – Killing Him