Corrosive and seductive in equal measure, Amy Rigby’s triumphant return is to be celebrated.
Amy Rigby’s music comes from the DIY punk ethic of exploring your art through the everyday. Finding art in the rhythms of life howsoever it presents itself. There is poetry in the dead-end job, the comradeship of others and the weirdness of events and the enduring social ripples they can cause. It’s an album of spiky guitars and woozy basslines, vocals that keen and snap rather than soothe and supplicate. Production is upfront and in your face and then there’s the lyrics… what lyricism… what poetry. The lyric sheet deserves publishing on its own. And as a previously published author Rigby relishes the word as it falls from the lips into the song.
The first single ‘Bob Dylan in Dubuque’ is a snarly, lip-sneered snap about a famous incident of stage invasion during a gig by His Bobness in the nineties wherein he just continued to play, unfazed and imperious. ‘Requiem’ poses the question ‘is it better to burn out than to fall apart’ over an insistent strummed acoustic and doo-wop backing vocals sunk deep in the mix. There’s almost something folky about the guitar but it is rooted in a New York feeling Lou Reed and Garfunkel maybe.
And so each song is a nugget. Garage pop and whip-smart guitar and vocals. It is a treatise on age and mortality as well as an affirmation of a life through music and art. This is indie-Americana writ large and deserves your attention. ‘He Was Bad In Good Way’ certainly ticks the Lou Reed box with its tuneful nod to Reed’s New York tune ‘Sick Of You’ and ‘Heart Is A Muscle’ features shards of guitar and power pop vibes as Rigby could be leading the Bangles on this and ‘Last Night’s Rainbow’.
This is an album of original songs by an original artist, played and sung with passion and conviction – what’s not to like? Thoroughly recommended.
