Rachel Harrington & The Knock Outs - Rachel Harrington Album Review

Rachel Harrington

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Album Review

At first glance the new Nashville sound currently taking shape in various basements across from the Cumberland River bears precious little resemblance to Rachel Harrington's fourth studio album. The former draws upon pop, punk and psychedelia as its primary sources, the latter is almost its complete antithesis steeped as it is in a much grander Ole Opry tradition. But scratch beneath their individual surfaces and their inherent lines become strangely parallel. Both have a genesis in East Nashville (Harrington's record having been partly recorded there) and both get back to their respective roots.

For Harrington's part, she eschews the darker well of 2010's 'Celilo Falls' with its poignant reflections upon an even older West and an even deeper South and its wraith-like sound to hook up with a full band. The Knock Outs, so called because of Harrington's love of boxing, also all happen to be women, women who share Harrington's other deep devotion to the music of honkytonks and classic country. And they play like they do. They approach a very well-travelled road with fresh legs and high energy, something evident by their just having completed a 32 date tour of Europe in 5 weeks dead. Sell out shows across the UK reflect the band's gathering momentum, playing as they did all bar one of these ten songs each and every night.

The true spirit and tradition of dancing, drinking and good loving is evident from the outset on the opening "Makin' Our House a Honkytonk". There is absolutely no shame in name checking Hank and Loretta when music sounds this bright. You feel that Harrington has been positively liberated by the acquisition of this band, even when ploughing those familiar lyrical country furrows of being someone's woman and him being someone else's man. You sense lying and cheating make no never mind in this world, such is the fun they are all having. And this is surely the tie that binds Harrington's new departure with the garage aesthetic of her east Nashville counterparts, the sheer joy of making music that you love.

Simon Godley