Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Jenny Queen, ABC Music/Universal Music 2019.
It is quite usual these days for me to review albums by Australian country performers that have been recorded in Nashville but this album almost reverses the process.
Ohio-raised but Sydney-based Jenny Queen has released her first album since 2014 and it’s a change of direction for her.
While musically the album is still firmly rooted in the alt. country tradition, the lyrical content has taken her on a different path.
She comments: “There’s a point at which you just can’t keep telling the same stories over and over again.
“I can write a break up song: I can keep writing the same break up song but you get curious about other people’s lives.
“Certainly there are a lot of interesting stories about where I’m from in Ohio – especially right now. I’m from an area that’s been very beat up by the whole Trump-America thing; there’s the opioid crisis, everybody’s out of work. It’s just a very beat up part of America.”
The album title is taken from the outpouring of a heartbroken graffitist.
Baby it Was Real And We Were the Best explores the tension between fatalism and the desire to have an impact that will change the trajectory of one’s life.
The album was produced by Shane Nicholson and Shane and Jenny were joined in the studio by the extraordinary skills of Jeff McCormack and master songsmith Kim Richey.
The album’s 10 tracks present a series of miniature novellas that explore the stories of people caught in circumstances that challenge their survivability.
The album moves from traditional country Americana with pedal-steel guitar through to tracks that incorporate a harder edge sound that borders on indie-rock.
Jenny has a versatile and powerful voice that breathes life into the characters she’s created as they battle against their fate, however futile the effort.
