A stylistically diverse album with more than a hint of rock, covering themes of motion memory, love and loss.
Lee began her career playing rhythm guitar and providing the vocals for The Mortals and Split the Dark, regionally successful rock bands from the South, throughout the 1980’s. She married and dropped out of the music business whilst raising a family, and followed other pursuits, though continuing to write songs. This is now her second solo album, released following the death of her husband in 2023. The songs and their themes demonstrate this life experience and are told with a vocal that can provide grit in a Lucinda Williams style and a beauty and purity that belies her age, sometimes in the same song.
The opening title song sets out what will be the core of the instrumental players throughout the album, with Lee on acoustic, her producer, Anthony Crawford, on mandolin, bass, and drums, Savana Lee on Harmony vocals, and strings by Chris Carmichael. This is a tight and impressive setup, with instruments swapped on different tracks and a light but meaningful addition of guests on key tracks. Everything Spins establishes the motion motif in the lyrics, relating life to being on a merry-go-round… until it stops. This is echoed on Bar Fly, where the character in the song sits and drinks with one of the regulars of her bar until her head spins, wishing to fly away with the bar fly being a metaphor for losing herself in the drink, ending with the poignant line “One fine day when this life is over, I’ll fly away.” In Trailerhood, a driving rock tune with a lyrical guitar line, where the protagonist looks back on growing up in a trailer park with some pride, the trailer park is destroyed by a twister, and the only remains are the cinderblocks her trailer sat on.
On an album where none of the songs wears out their welcome, the shortest is Lost in Love at 1:35. In perhaps a personal response to overly sympathetic well-wishers, she sings “Whoever said ‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, never lost in love”, against a folk background of mandolin and picked acoustic guitar. This is counterbalanced emotionally and musically by the more upbeat Celebrate, with the chorus: “All we got is every day and a lot of love, love is good, love is great, open up your heart and celebrate.” Without the context, this could sound trite and cliched but here can be seen as an optimistic way forward and a call to enjoy every day.
Lee uses her guests effectively on two tracks. On Better Angels, she has the last recorded output of Harry Gale on guitar before his untimely death. It is an effective piece of country pop with a vocal performance that moves from Lucinda Williams on the verse to Taylor Swift on the hooky chorus. On Shut Up Y’all, a gospel-flavoured number about there being too much modern “noise” for people to hear Jesus, she has Will Kimbrough on guitar, the McCrary Sisters on vocals and tambourine and Spike Sykes on the Hammond B3. A very authentic-sounding call for peace and reflection, told in a humorous way.
The closer When I’m Gone, is perhaps the most stylistically different. It has a sparse accompaniment of a stomp drum on a loop, mandolin, and an electric guitar sound very redolent of Chris Whitley’s resonator on his early albums. This gives the song a sombre feel, setting up the lyrical refrain “when I’m gone, you won’t find… you won’t find me when I’m gone.” It has a real emotional heft and completes the themes of moving on and loss.
Lee has produced a mature and varied album, which, whilst at first listen seems pretty standard americana, benefits from repeat listens to unlock all the subtlety within and has some real stand-out tracks.
