I flat-out couldn't buy it when Lydia Loveless got tagged as a country punk rocker following the release of her second album, Indestructible Machine ( Bloodshot Records, 2012 ).
There is no question that her voice, music and band have an upfront edge and a lack of Nashville polish, but "punk" it ain't. That label implies that her work is rebellious, hard and confrontational but the new album, Somewhere Else ( Bloodshot Records ), proves me right in spades. For starters, the CD is a LOT more complicated emotionally than the "punk" tag could suggest.
If Loveless—who did grow up on a farm in Ohio and then decided that she needed something meatier than Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" as an anthem—is hardly a true punk, she actually comes across as a female version of filmmaker John Cassavetes, with a hickory switch twang. Her music is loaded with raw emotion, unguarded honesty and blunt sincerity on the page, but when she sings it in that ragged/elegant voice of hers, surrounded by a phalanx of charging guitars, it becomes overwhelming, confessional and muscular.
Somewhere Else is delicate, brutal, scary and seductive, and goes beyond what Indestructible Machine promised. For anyone looking for some dainty Southern belle trilling over a cushy bed of weeping slide guitars as tears shimmy down her alabaster cheeks, this CD is certainly NOT for you.
"Wine Lips" is the neatest hat trick that I've heard in years, and features the kind of irony that current U.S. composers seem incapable of creating. Loveless' protagonist is caught in a swirling swoon of desire just as she realizes that she is being frozen out of this big romance. Loveless sings the lyrics with a careless abandon that totters all over lust, heartbreak and fury and it's hard to escape the notion that this romance could end in murder. "Hurt So Bad"—which Loveless has stated was inspired by the doomed epic union of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—sounds like she is holding back vocally, which is not a bad thing. Between the way she slurs the words and her control in putting across her emotional turmoil, the recording emerges as jagged, fragile and haunting. My favorite is "Somewhere Else," which is the kind of lilting, articulate, subtle mix of melancholy and euphoria that drugs the listener on the first listen.
What I love about Somewhere Else is the uncompromising approach. Sure, it's packed with heartache but rather than her just lying in it, Loveless and her crack band ( husband/bassist Ben Lamb, guitarist Todd May, drummer George Hondroulis, and pedal steel guitarist Jay Gasper ) wrap the music in a big propulsive sound that gives the words the drama of a cyclone. With this bunch involved, Somewhere Else is hardly dour or insufferable; instead, it's downright engaging, hypnotic and thrilling.
In front of a packed house at Lincoln Hall on Nov. 28, Loveless almost flew off the rails while taking her devoted fans with her. Celebrating her emergence as a headliner, she kicked the show off with a rollicking "Bad Way to Go" and had a high old time from then on. "Steve Earle" ( a slightly sinister/humorous song about a serial killer who looks like musician Steve Earle ) and the newer "Verlaine Shot Rimbaud" felt like guilty pleasures served with a sloppy bounce. The more emotionally vexing "To Love Somebody" and "Learn to Say 'No'" reached for the stars and delivered. "Wine Lips" was what I was waiting for but the 'live' take had a bit more fire behind it and caught me off guard.
Loveless and her band dug so deep into the song that it was impossible not to envision it as the soundtrack of a disturbingly sober moment at a 4 a.m. bar between "last call," and when the lights are switched on after way too much sincerity and hard alcohol.
It makes a lot of sense for Loveless to be signed to indie label Bloodshot Records. Somewhere Else implies that she is taking country in a direction that would scare the bejesus out of the establishment of Nashville and that establishment wouldn't have a clue as to how to "handle" her. Taylor, girl, you better run; Lydia is going to kick your ass.
