Hazeldine and female alt-country

Return to the New West (Part 1)

I am finally getting back to my planned series of posts on songs on the Sounds of the New West (SONW) Uncut CD from 1998!

The first song on SONW is 'Tarmac' by Hazeldine, and it certainly kicks off the CD in defiantly non-country mode, with heavy drums and snarling guitars. I must admit, in fear of accusations of sexism, that my dalliance with country music, of various degrees of alt-ness, has focussed mainly on male singers, as I have found too often that female voices somehow make the sound far less alt and far more traditional (to be explored more in later posts in this series). Nonetheless, a sound like Hazeldene’s, dominated by the aforementioned grungy guitars, is not something one would associate with Nashville, and one could certainly never imagine Nancy Griffith seductively offering the intriguing invitation to ‘f**k me like Batman’.



I quite like ‘Tarmac’, and went as far as to buy the CD ‘How bees fly’, at a CD fair if I remember right. The album is fine overall, but I can’t say it would be a favourite, and many of the songs do ditch the heavy guitars for something more conventional; on occasion, such as ‘Allergic to love’, the result is actually quite lovely. In addition, there are some good songs, such as ‘Apothecary’ (such a beautiful word, archaic and arcane, faintly smelling of odd alchemicals) which hit something stronger and stranger.

In terms of other female country singers/groups, I have had a long-standing relationship with the Indigo Girls, discovered during college years and always retaining a soft spot in my heart, although their output over the last decade has done little for me. Their ‘Southland in the Springtime’ (from 1990’s career peak Nomads, Indians and Saints) is simply one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, warm like an aural cuddle, incredibly and tangibly evocative of a place I have never been, and with a gorgeous combination of harmony voices and acoustic guitars and a richness of texture that is quite breathtaking.

I have also bought or downloaded quite a few Lucinda Williams albums; she is in some ways analogous to a female Nick Cave, veering from the scary to the sweet on different albums, from the utter beauty and tenderness of ‘Essence’ (from which ‘Blue’ and ‘I envy the wind’ defy my limited ability to find new words for beautiful without a thesaurus to hand) to the scary rap-country she practiced on her next album ‘World without tears’.

I guess my conclusion, circuitously reached and outrageously generalising, is that, while they have not dominated my collection, female alt-countresses (?) can undoubtedly hit peaks of heavenly beauty firmly denied to their male counterparts.