H.C. McEntire – Lionheart

Over the course of three excellent albums, Heather McEntire’s powerful vocals helped melt the edgier leanings of Mount Moriah, a band which had its roots in punk and metal. It resulted in a wonderful Americana blend, with each record venturing further into the sounds of the South.

Indeed, on listening to her debut solo record, it’s hard to believe that this is the same McEntire who launched her career with the jagged post-punk of Bellafea. She's gone full country, and this is an album without edge or edges: a homogenous affair in which the songs seep, indistinguishably, into one another. Promoting the record, she talks of the rustic recording process. “If you listen close enough, you can probably hear some hound howls, some creaky wooden floors, some trains running their routes,” but we’re left with something so polished that a lick of rust would be welcome.

There are moments when she gets it right. The short and simple One Great Thunder serves to emphasise the fact that the album as a whole is over-produced and over-populated. The chorus line on Red Silo ('Back when this old town smelled like tobacco…') is fantastic, but is soon absorbed in the overbearing swirl of pedal steel and harmonies. Otherwise, there is little to separate the tracks from each other, resulting in a batch of unmemorable songs. Lionheart promised much, but fails to capture the imagination in the way McEntire’s previous work has.

Listen to: One Great Thunder