Artist: Shawna Russell
Album: Back Around
Label: Our Land Records
Release Date: 6.7.2017
Shawna Russell has been out of the frame for the past five or six years but with this release she is indeed back around again. Tracks are unashamedly rocking Americana with a drilling muscular edge that lifts them out of the humdrum end of the music.
Russell describes the road she travelled to bring this album to fruition as having been part of a ‘roller-coaster ride’ but the result is an album that features her inner thoughts, hopes and optimism with songs that ache and pull out the very best of her own music together with her travelling family band, a true family affair that includes both her uncle, Tim Russell on bass, and guitarist father, Keith, all adding a fiery, fierce backing track that echoes perfectly with Shawnee Russell’s own clear vocals.
In truth, it took a couple of listens before this album really impressed itself on me, but once it did, it remained a worthy offering from a lady who clearly knows what she’s about with underlying hints of Linda Ronstadt, Roseanne Cash, Melissa Etheridge and a host of Nashvillian vocal powerhouses evident in the influential mix.
Russell’s third offering on her – again family – own label, Our Land Records, this is one of those albums that you can’t help thinking or feeling you might have heard before but which, in truth, has more than enough spark and originality to surprise, delight and prove you wrong.
–Iain Patience
Be the first to comment!