My Girl The River’s mainly acoustic album is themed around space, metaphorical, physical and mental.
My Girl The River is the band fronted by Kris Wilkinson Hughes, Louisiana-born but longtime UK-based, with support from her husband Joe Hughes on bass. ‘Songs About Space’ is the follow-up to her 2020 release ‘Cardinal in The Snow’, and draws together new and unreleased tracks with five singles released between 2021 and this year. Under the broad theme of space, Wilkinson Hughes tells us that the album is “split into three sections; the metaphorical, the physical and the mental, it is space we all sometimes crave”.
Even within this broad theme this is a varied collection, united by Wilkinson Hughes acoustic guitar and fine vocals, both lead and harmonies. Opening track ‘The Galaxy Room’ starts and finishes with a guitar arpeggio reminiscent of Love’s ‘Forever Changes’ album, the title the name of a dive bar in L.A., a tale of two lost souls in the same place, but maybe never destined to be together, “Staring straight into the sun/ Is the loneliest man in the moon/ Blinded by her wonderous light/ Right here in the Galaxy Room/ Instead of staring at the bar/ If she would only look his way/ She’d see the love of her life/Wasn’t a lightyear, a lightyear away”.
Maintaining the space theme ‘Spacewalking’ has an ethereal feel, with reverb-drenched vocals, bass and synth strings adding to the atmosphere as Wilkinson-Hughes sings “Light as a feather, there is no weather/ Just me and the stars together/ No turning back home, I’m on my own/ Houston leave me alone/ Astronaut party of one/ Turning my back to the sun, ahhh/ Spacewalking, there’s no talking/ It’s so quiet, I really like it/ Floating away in the dark”.
Lyrics throughout are well crafted, whether taking the listener to distant places, or telling a dark tale as in the stripped back ‘Only Get One Shot’, which sets the scene with “He wakes up like a bull in the bed/ Fourteen thousand snakes in his head” before it’s last moment reveal, or the sensitive reflection on the pain of realising that your help is sometimes not enough, ‘Helpless’, with it’s acoustic guitar arpeggio in 6:8 time, with emotional strings accompaniment “I can tell you/ Have been hurting yourself again/ Oh I feel helpless, oh I feel helpless/ I wanna burn your pain down/ And throw it into the river/ And let it float away”.
Demonstrating that her repertoire includes uptempo too, ‘Wild Ride’ has a West Coast feel, with a full band arrangement and glorious harmonies “I will call you when I reach the end/ It’s a wild, wild ride to the other side/ Are you gonna hide or stand up and fight”, and album closer ‘Sing Along With The Band’ is upbeat too, “People were smiling and clapping their hands/ No place to sit, let’s take a stand and/ Sing along with the band”, jaunty and joyous, with credits to David Grubb on fiddle and daughter Rue Hughes on Shaker & BVs.
This is a well-crafted collection of songs from Wilkinson Hughes, with her fine vocals shining through.
