Singer, songwriter, and acoustic guitarist Amy Annelle has been releasing albums for a quarter-century, but not consistently in recent years. Now, reportedly “emerging from a long battle with chronic illness,” the Austin, Texas–based performer is back with her first CD since 2015, the excellent The Toll.
Annelle has previously recorded material by such artists as Jesse Winchester and Neil Young and is best known for her reading of Townes Van Zandt’s “Buckskin Stallion Blues,” which featured in the soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. But as the dozen originals on The Tollsuggest, her own compositions are often as good as those of any of the artists she’s covered.
The album’s moody, intimate music, which occasionally recalls Nick Drake, Lucinda Williams, or early Donovan, draws on country and Americana but thanks to its ornate string arrangements and complex melodies is perhaps best labeled baroque folk. Annelle’s sweet, unaffected singing is a marvel – listen to how she stretches syllables and varies her delivery from a whisper to a near-shout to convey just the right message. Lush instrumentation adds warmth and emotional intensity and, oh, those lyrics, which paint vivid, cliché-free pictures of people, places, and emotional struggles.
There’s not a weak cut on this album but standouts include the melancholy “Pull Tabs and Broken Glass,” a duet with singer/songwriter Jolie Holland in which Annelle surveys the ground around an old, broken-down home and imagines the shattered lives that might have played out there. Other winners include “Common Law Marriage,” where Annelle trades verses with her co-producer, Cooper McBean, and sings about a boyfriend who “ain’t the marryin’ kind”; and “The Lonesome Whistle,” a ballad that would fit well alongside Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
The best song, though, is “Down and Out in Denver,” whose lines sound as if they could have been plucked from a diary entry. The tune – which features Austin-based fiddler Beth Chrisman as well as McBean on banjo and acoustic guitar – tells the first-person tale of a musician who has hit rock bottom in the mile-high city. “Hear me, friend, it was a mistake to have ever set foot in Denver,” sings Annelle, who adds, “I cried, for I finally had nothing to lose but a guitar and my worn-out shoes.”
As songs like this demonstrate, she is a singular talent. Don’t miss her or this superlative new album.
Also Noteworthy
Mighty Mike Schermer, The Legend of Michael Ray Pickens and His Old Man Country Band. Mike Schermer has been a blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist for more than three decades, and to help with this latest album, he taps practitioners of that genre, including Kid Andersen, who co-produced and plays guitars and banjo.
Blues is not what you’ll hear on Schermer’s latest CD, however.
The album opens with him proclaiming “I’ve denied my country roots too long” and “I’m here to tell you that country music ain’t nothing but the blues.” Schermer goes on to deliver a set that often has one foot in the Bakersfield sound and the other in Austin honky-tonk. The musicianship is first-rate, and the singer’s voice lends itself well to country. His lyrics, meanwhile, evidence a love of wordplay as well as a playfulness that’s sometimes reminiscent of Roger Miller.
Schermer penned all 10 songs on the album, three with co-writers. Highlights include “Two Whiskey Bottles,” whose instrumentation is redolent of the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers; the Tex-Mex-flavored “Going to Jalisco’s,” an accordion- and trumpet-spiced number that sounds like something out of the Texas Tornados’ catalog; and the lighthearted “We’re Stuck,” where Schermer trades verses with his life partner, Kimberly Pickens, in a performance that recalls the duets on John Prine’s In Spite of Ourselves. The album ends with one of its few serious moments, a portrait of a killer called “Exit Through the Gun Shop” that is not likely to be played at NRA conventions.
Jeff Burger’s website, byjeffburger.com, contains five decades’ worth of music reviews, interviews, and commentary. His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, and Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters.
