Top-grade songwriting, singing and playing on an album which could be the best of her career.
Starting on a Byrds-style descending guitar line, the title song of Michelle Malone’s latest album come across close to the sort of classic rock which The Faces and Stones did so well. Her band has a quality bar band feel that makes you feel at home with their sound straightaway. It’s a song which highlights the cooperative nature of this album, picking up influences and collaborations from across her career. The song ‘Southern Comfort‘ last appeared in 1992 on her previous band, Drag The River’s live album.
‘Like Mother Like Daughter’ will be recognised in most families. She’s the kind of woman that’ll tell you what to think and where you can go. One day you realize that you finally got it right because she told you so. Well, she’ll stay with you, pray with you, tell you you’re ok when the world treats you black and blue, and she’ll sing for you, scheme for you, climb in the ring for you, anything you ask her to and it’s not because she oughta like mother like daughter.” Written you feel from experience, but like the words to most of the songs here, wonderfully observational. Over half the album was written with Dean Dillon who has contributed tunes to many country music legends.
Roots Rock ballad ‘I Choke On My Words’ is the softer side of Malone’s music and leads into other songs in a similar vein. ‘Simple Life’ and ‘Easter Sunday’ both have a radio friendly chill to them. The latter saved from blandness by its closing guitar solo.
‘Undercover Mother’ returns to the bar room boogie with the story about a police officer. Another set of lyrics to make you smile and dance, and proof that Malone can write perfectly well on her own. The up-tempo songs are where this album scores best. If there’s a criticism it would be that there are at least one too many medium to slow ballads. Which one you would have changed is the difficult question as the songwriting is uniformly great.
Most valuable player amongst the many guests is definitely Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr. On the Tom Petty-sounding ‘One Track Mind’ and ‘Like Mother Like Daughter’ he lifts the song in the way that a good Mike Campbell riff did for Petty. Will Kimbrough and Buddy Miller acquit themselves well on ‘Barbed Wire Kisses’ and ‘I Choke On My Words’ respectively with Randall Bramblett’s Wurlitzer piano shifting the feel on the latter song to something almost Southern Soul.
Malone says that ‘Southern Comfort’ “brings me full circle in a lot of ways. From the beginning of my career, I’ve always had a foot in the southern-rock world and a foot in the folk world. This record really solidifies the stance and brings those sounds together” And while a lot of play is made in the press about the high-profile guests, the album is all about her. Her singing and writing, whether solo or with Dillon and others, puts the stamp of quality across the whole record. With a product this good though surely the designer could have come up with a more imaginative cover…
