KELSEY WALDON
White Noise/white Lines
OH BOY/THIRTY TIGERS 8/10 Captivating breakthrough effort from Nashville’s newest Kentucky queen
KELSEY WALDON recorded her first self-released album, Anchor In The Valley, in 2010. A small handful of others have since followed, mostly going unnoticed outside of her adopted Nashville, but her recent signing to John Prine’s Oh Boy label (the first artist to do so in 15 years) has finally created the buzz that her talent so richly deserves.
White Noise/white Lines is a compelling showcase for both her admirable songwriting skills and, as Prine puts it, “one of the more authentic country voices I’ve heard in a long time”. Anyone looking for a handy primer as to Waldon’s back story should head directly to “Kentucky, 1988”, a condensed piece of autobiography that serves as her own Coal Miner’s Daughter moment. Growing up in Monkey’s Eyebrow in Western Kentucky, she relates a tale of parental disharmony, a brown trailer on wheels and “Sunday school for your prayin’ / Rotgut for your pain”. It’s a song about identity and fortitude as much as anything else, Waldon’s classic country voice insisting that “This is my DNA/I wouldn’t have it any other way” even as its liquid guitar line mirrors the road southward to Nashville.
Just as bluegrass, country and soul act as the bedrock of her music, Waldon’s lyrics advocate a sense of inclusivity. “Sunday’s Children”, powered by a greasy R&B groove, is a plea for unity and togetherness that never feels preachy, while the equally sublime “Lived And Let Go” suggests that, ultimately, “We all get along in the sweet by-and-by”. There are plenty of references to home, from the muggy blues of the title track, with its deep-twang guitar and Chickasaw tribal chant, to interludes involving friends and family. And “Black Patch” is a paean to the local tobacco wars of the previous century, when crop owners dug in against the threat of big business. She even manages to transform the intimate truths of Ola Belle Reed’s “My Epitaph” into something deeply universal. Much like the rest of White Noise/white Lines, in fact.