She didn’t waste any time in Music City, quickly finding herself on the hallowed stage at Robert’s Western World on Broadway, before independently releasing her debut album, HELL OF A WOMAN, in 2017. Despite attending Columbia College and majoring in audio engineering, her early exposure to country music had sown the seeds for her favoured vocation and, like scores of others, she headed to Nashville to follow her dream. Born and raised in California, she was introduced at an early age to the music of Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, and Jessi Coulter by her mother, and John Coltrane and James Brown by her father. Flawless production (hats off to Mike Eli for that), impeccable playing throughout, Nennie’s classic nasally vocal purr, and some great songs, all amount to a really accomplished presentation.įirstly, a bit of background about the currently Nashville-based artist. Review by Eilís Boland Emily Nennie On The Ranch Normaltown /New Westīoasting all the key components that tick the ‘modern but real’ country music box for me, Emily Nennie’s second full-length album, ON THE RANCH, is a particularly slick slice of honky tonk honed tunes. Spend some time with this record and you will understand why. Nashville’s Compass record label recognised the potential of this band over five years ago when they signed them up. Leisureplex recalls, with excruciating attention to detail, the intense awkwardness of first love, which eventually fizzles out as life moves on. A Chuid den Tsaol (with an English translation in the lyrics booklet) tells of the tentative longings of a young person attempting to communicate the depth of her love for an unsuspecting other, accompanied simply by acoustic guitar, cello and beautiful double stop fiddle playing that could only be Irish (even though Adrian Hart is actually a Yorkshire man!). The album ends with two evocations of first love. We go to New Orleans for the bluesy Trouble, with horns here (and on several other songs) courtesy of Bill Blackmore and Colm O’Hara. As well as backing vocals from her brother, they are joined on several tracks by the ‘Choir’ of Michelle O’Rourke and Siobhra Quinlan, including on Dublin Bay, Christmas Day (another musing on a long relationship) and on Bring Out Your Dead. Louise Holden takes the lead vocal on all of the songs, her gorgeous voice reminiscent sometimes of the late Dolores O’Riordan, but perhaps even sweeter.
The song, influenced by Orwell, explores the duplicity of political language, ‘yesterday you were the snake, the ladder/who are you today?’ĭearly contemplates the past through rose coloured glasses, musing that perhaps this is the best way to view it, with the repeated refrain ‘Dearly/Sincerely/Forgetfully yours’, guest Greg Felton on piano adding a delicate layer to the guitar and banjo soundtrack. The soundscape in Copenhagen Interpretation is even more deliciously lush, thanks in part to guest Kate Ellis (Crash Ensemble) on cello, interplaying with the acoustic guitar, banjo and fiddle, building up delicately then descending in cascades to an abrupt ending.
In the former, the unfortunate trapped bullfinch is a metaphor for the feeling of trying to extricate oneself from a complicated and smothering relationship, with the protagonist checking through security in an attempt to find escape, but ‘I swore when I left you last time/it would be the last time I’d ever leave, If I change my mind I can always find you/left of the devil, right of the deep blue sea.’ As well as co-producing with the siblings, Adrian Hart really comes into his own here on this acoustic track with his soaring fiddle wor evoking perfectly the frantic escape efforts of the trapped subject. We’re taken right back to the 60s/70s Laurel Canyon sound in About a Bird in an Airport and Copenhagen Interpretation. The sound too has moved on, with wider musical influences more to the fore. Influenced by loss and tragedy over the recent couple of years, the songwriting of the two Holdens is darker than before, sometimes obscure, but always worth investing in. The core band composition of siblings Dave (guitar, vocals) and Louise Holden (vocals), along with Konrad Liddy (bass), Adrian Hart (fiddle) and Colin Derham (clawhammer banjo) has remained stable from the start, which probably contributes to the ever evolving progression of their sound towards something quite unique.
With this being only their fifth album since they formed in 2008 (from the ashes of the much missed old time/bluegrass band Prison Love), I Draw Slow demonstrate why they are probably Ireland’s best exponents of the fusion of Celtic and American music.
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