*** MICHELLE SHOCKED, “Kind Hearted Woman,” Private Music
Want to feel better about your life? Listen to Michelle Shocked’s new album, a collection of tragic one-acts set in rural America. In the grand Texan songwriting tradition, these dire, hard-luck tales are vivid, unflinching portraits of misery. Her keening vocals punctuate a catalog of death, vain hopes and useless retaliation against God himself, becoming positively wraithlike on the stark opening track, “Stillborn.”
This modern folkie has previously indulged pet styles from punk to blues to swing, but here the band, including Hothouse Flowers’ Fiachna O’Braonain and Peter O’Toole, sticks to a raw folk-country-rock vein. The songs range from angular acoustic rock to barroom swing to country pop, occasionally recalling alterna-divas Kristin Hersh and Johnette Napolitano.
A touch of black humor (“Eddie”) eases the load, and the ballad “Silver Spoon” offers one lonely ray of light. Yet the most powerful moments are the bleaker ones; Shocked’s abstract musings toward the end slightly weaken the album’s effect.
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Hear the Album
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