Lillie Mae : "Other Girls"

This time of year when I am clicking around the internet looking for what I might have missed sometimes uncovers surprises  like this album . She is on Jack White's label and White has a taste for classic country.   If I am half way into the first song and looking for a way to down load it then you know something is right. The opener "You've Got Other Girls For That" is powerful songwriting as evident in spurning this reaction. When her sound expands beyond the strum and she really lets her melodies open up she is pretty unstoppable as a song writer. She has a quality to her voice that is similar to Kacey Musgraves, if this was not written with any pretense of a pop market involved. While that might find her expanding into the kind of gold a song like "High Horse" created, there is an honesty in what she does that compensates.

"How?" is an example of how this album keeps unfolding into other gems. It is the kind of songwriting that Taylor Swift would have been proud of in her earlier country days. Though this owes more to the classic than that era. It is not hyper polished pop. It's more hopeful and resolved even in the odes to various kinds of heart break. The use of the instruments sometimes has a more Americana feel.  "At Least Three In this Room" taps into the sweet again. It's a little more upbeat than some.  "Some Gamble" has a rich arrangement and it bears to say this album is really well produced and warm. She has a decent range, with more up top than an alto range. For that reason there is never a darker grit to these songs. The melody sticks with you a little better than some of the songs on this album.trains of melancholy, but compared to most of what we call dark here it is more a sentimental shade of gray. That is not to say this will not appeal to fans of artists like Marissa Nadler and Chelsea Wolfe.


"Didn't I" benefits from strong hooks."Terlingua Girl" is  a lazy casual strum that floats eventual into a more sonic dynamic that is more ghostly than what we have experienced with this album so far.    The last song also goes into a weird sonic place that is more experimental and darker than the rest of the album. Even as an indie country album this comes with some surprises that think out of the box and would appeal more to the normal readers here. This is a great album I will give it a 9.5. Guess that says the rest,