Tuesday, October 16, 2018

CD Odyssey Disc 1189: Lindi Ortega

It’s been a long day filled with ups and downs but here I sit at the end of it with my old friends: a keyboard and an album full of music.

Disc 1189 is… Liberty
Artist: Lindi Ortega

Year of Release: 2018

What’s up with the Cover? Lindi Ortega rides out as a bandit, signature red boots high in the stirrups.

How I Came To Know It: I am a big fan of Lindi Ortega so when I heard she had a new album coming out I added it to my list. I waited impatiently for several months for it to be released. It was on my “to buy” list without a release date so I probably checked the stands three or four times before it was even out. Anyway, eventually it arrived at the local record store and I grabbed a copy.

How It Stacks Up:  I have five Lindi Ortega albums. Of those, I put “Liberty” in at the bottom of that list – so fifth.

Ratings: 3 stars

When you release a concept album you live or die by the theme – sometimes you do both. So it is with Lindi Ortega’s 2018 release “Liberty.”

Up to this point in her career Ortega has explored bad, sassy, sexy and more than a few dissertations on the elusive nature of both love and fame. On “Liberty” she takes a new tack, embracing traditional western themes and music, and fusing them with her seductive alt-country sound.

Ortega goes all in on these notions, with references to tornados, lonely plains, gunfights the love of a good man, and the equally important love of a good horse. The album features an early attempted murder (and maybe some kind of resurrection from the dead), some revenge before closing with what I think is a happy ending and a ride off into the sunset.

Musically, Ortega’s smoky, sultry vocals remain and she sings many of the songs in a half-whisper that makes them feel conspiratorial – like a death-bed confession laced with just the right amount of sin. There are places where I wanted Ortega to belt it out a bit (she comes close on “In the Clear,” but stays restrained and slightly layered in heavy guitar reverb).

That reverb is ever-present on the record and although it creates a cohesive sound it also serves to water down a lot of the great old-time spaghetti western feel the songs have. All the trappings of old school westerns are there: trumpet flourishes, trail-riding harmonica and the ominous strains of the steel guitar played low and mournful, like a prairie haunting. I would have liked her to explore the combination of traditional western and her own more modern alt-country style from a few more angles, different angles, although that might have disrupted the mood of mystery she’s trying to establish.

Ortega divides the album into movements, separated by the instrumental “Through the Dust” divided into three sections. These short interludes sound like Ennio Morricone on Quaaludes which is trippy, but at times take away the record’s momentum.

In its darker moments, “Liberty” reminded me of Handsome Family murder ballads, but with less obvious violence. Instead, Ortega tends to cleave more toward dark romance, playing both the wounded lover and then the femme fatale depending on where you are at in the story.

The record is bass-heavy, and would have benefited from a bit less boom at the bottome end. I think the intent was to create a heavy foreboding, but a little lightness might make key moments sink in that much deeper when they’re needed.

Lovers in Love” feels like an old seventies croon-fest, and has a timeless quality that would have done Dolly Parton or Linda Ronstadt proud. There is an anthemic quality to songs like this and the inspirational “In the Clear” that leave you feeling like you are standing heroically on a wood-plank deck looking out at a Monument Valley sunset in a John Ford picture. Lindi’s wearing a cowboy hat and there’s a slight breeze but it doesn’t threaten the hat; it just makes her hair blow majestically.

The Comeback Kid” is the radio-friendly single, and features the mix of blues and country that I’ve come to expect from earlier releases. It may be a familiar sound but I liked it – it even has hand claps, and what song isn’t made better by hand claps?

All the songs work thematically, and most of them would also stand alone as pieces about a jilted lover; no gunfights required. The double meaning of the songs as both high-plains revenge and straight up romance works well overall.

I would have liked a little less murk and ambience and a bit more of the sparseness of a trail song in the Marty Robbins style, but the mix of styles Ortega is going for is a fragile balance and it isn’t easy to maintain the sweet spot. For the most part she lands it.

Best tracks: Afraid of the Dark, The Comeback Kid, In the Clear, Lovers in Love, Liberty

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