Tami Neilson. Dynamite!

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We’re all used to the UK being somewhat behind the times when it comes to the Antipodes what with them celebrating New Year when we’re just getting out of our beds on 31st December. Well, in the case of Dynamite! we’re several months behind as this album was released in New Zealand around a year ago but is only now getting a UK release. Tami Neilson is garlanded in NZ, winner of their version of the Grammies on four occasions plus several song writing awards, not bad for a Canadian girl who grew up as part of her family’s country/gospel road show before moving down under after marrying a New Zealander.

Anyway, Dynamite! is a dynamite album, retro tooled from the cover art to the music to capture the bygone era of Sun Records and gutsy singers such as Wanda Jackson and Patsy Cline as Neilson delves into rockabilly, country and soul with some panache, a down under Imelda May indeed. The ten songs here are all top notch. Neilson can sound ferocious, sultry, sassy or menacing as required while the band and production nail the sound. Big boned guitars, velvety pedal steel and rattling percussion with country fiddle here and there are all bundled up in a glorious noise that reeks of valves and old time radio broadcasts.

The album opens with the defiant clarion call of Walk (Back To Your Arms) with Neilson walking on the wild side as she defies family wisdom and goes back to a bad boy’s embrace. With its bluesy riff and sinister guitar it evokes images of lurid pulp fiction covers of the fifties. Come Over is a thrash of a song that is like a shot of adrenaline to the soul amplifying the likes of Brenda Lee to the nth degree. The following Texas is a reprieve as Neilson shifts into country mode with ease, the song a brilliant recreation of early sixties honky tonk country music and there’s more country on the loose limbed Honey Girl which has some rootsy fiddling and excellent fingerpickin’ guitar. Whiskey and Kisses is another country song but here we’re in saloon bar territory as Neilson is joined on vocals by guitarist Delaney Davidson for a tearstained lament in the best George & Tammy tradition. Neilson shares vocals again with Davidson on the dramatic Running To You which is a driving romantic narrative in the vein of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra or Calexico on The Ballad of Cable Hogue and which sends shivers up the spine. As if this were not enough Neilson offers up some tin pan alley/Brill Building melodrama on the beehived and pizzicato pop song that is Cry Over You. It would be remiss not to mention the title song which is in a similar vein to Walk (Back To Your Arms) but here the guitar really sparks and burns as the drums pound and Neilson sings with a vengeance. Absolutely brilliant.

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Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue. Last To Leave.

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Isn’t the internet wonderful? A few months ago I happened on a video that stood out for two reasons. First was the one take approach to it as the camera panned and dollied around the band playing, nice. Second however was the band itself. A Patsy Cline like singer with an intriguing look sang wonderfully over a magnificent blowsy Spanish inflected twang laden backing. The band was Gal Holiday And The Honky Tonk Revue and the song was To Make Amends. It stuck with me so Blabber’n’Smoke eventually acquired a copy of their latest album, Last To Leave, and lo and behold, To Make Amends is but one of the gems contained therein.

New Orleans residents, Gal Holiday And the Honky Tonk Revue are fronted by Vanessa Niemann, a wonderful singer, fired by the likes of Cline, Wanda Jackson and Loretta Lynn. She’s a formidable looking lady, the album cover has her imperiously sitting, defiant, outside an old trailer van, bags packed. Her lizard green dress and cowboy boots, tattoos and flame red hair all flagging up danger, this woman is not to be messed with. The image is carried on to the music, she sings with a sultry confidence, a country torch singer with attitude. Meanwhile the band curl and swing hitting plain old honky tonk, sweet bluegrass stylings and killer outlaw country.

From the start Niemann asserts her authority as a hefty grunt from her opens the first song, The Long Black Ribbon, a wide screen cowboy clatter with sterling pedal steel and telecaster twang. She’s A Killer is a film noire piece set to Western swing with double bass plucking bravely and the guitars just hoovering it up as they duel and quarrel. It’s similar to the rockabilly stylings of Imelda Mae but to the nth degree. Last To Leave is a fairly straightforward country styled lament but again the performance is well above par and they continue at this level throughout the album. Broke Down And Broke is gritty trucking fare while Rainy Nights, Sunny Days is suffused with early sixties Nashville smoothness, slightly jazzy with an excellent guitar solo that shares joy and tears, you need to hear this but it really is magnificent. Teach Me How To Two Step ups the sassiness quotient as Niemann swaggers over some more excellent guitars (it has to be said here that Chris Adkins and Tony Martinez on guitar and pedal steel shine throughout the album) and on the one cover here, Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield, they rein in the temptation to offer an amped up country rock version and instead treat the song to a brisk Bakersfield jaunt which again has some superb picking.

Last To Leave is an audaciously great listen from start to finish and while New Orleans folk can catch the band on a regular basis it would be great if someone could entice the band to cross the water. In the meantime we have the disc and that video.

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