Carson McHone

★★★★ Still Life LOOSE. CD/DL/LP

Third LP makes good on early promise, and then some.

For five years Austin’s Carson McHone has been a staple of ‘ones to watch’ New Year predictors, her country-tinged songs touching emotions rarely available to other songwriters. On 2019’s Carousel McHone hinted that she had far wider musical ambitions, but it barely forewarned of the wonders revealed here. The album leaps from popping Southern soul horns and greasy sax to poignant piano balladry, discordant psychedelic guitar or, on the startlingly spartan closing track, Tried, just a single guitar string plucked with slowly building ferocity, while McHone pours her heart out about cancelled promises, poor choices (hers and others), emotional ambushes and sweet surrender. The touchstone influences – Aimee Mann, Frazey Ford, Ann Peebles – barely begin to scratch the surface of the musical depths McHone mines on Still Life, which finally moves her on from being just ‘one to watch’ to the woman of the moment.