CD Odyssey Disc 1961: India Ramey

This next album is going to be a contender for my Top 10 albums of the year list. I won’t decide that until all the listens are in, but it’ll definitely be in the conversation.

Disc 1961 is…Villain Era

Artist: India Ramey

Year of Release: 2026

What’s up with the Cover? Old school cover, old school country and western, and India Ramey herself, looking as confident and self-possessed as a burgeoning talent should.

How I Came To Know It: I read a review on a music review site called Americana Highways and decided to give it a listen. Then I hit her up on Bandcamp. Every song I heard I liked more and more, and here we are.

How It Stacks Up: India Ramey has six albums but so far I only own “Villain Era”. I feel this is going to change soon but until it does, there is no stacking up to be had.

Ratings: 4 stars but almost 5

It seems like every year we lose another icon of the golden age of country music (miss you already, Dolly) and our western heroes have been gone even longer (RIP Tex Ritter, 1974; Marty Robbins, 1982). But readers, I’m here to tell you there is still cause for hope – and the name of that hope is India Ramey.

On “Villain Era” singer-songwriter Ramey has accomplished greatness in both genres – country and western – and found a way to take traditional structures in both genres and bring them into the 21^st century with panache, power and a dollop of dark humour.

Ramey’s liner notes indicate she wanted this record to sound like “Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn had risen from the grave to score a Quentin Tarantino film”. A lofty goal with some name-dropping hubris but damn it if she doesn’t land it exactly as planned.

It starts with skillful songwriting, that matches up traditional country and western structures with clever and evocative lyrics.

The record’s opener, “We Ride at Dawn” is a classic dark western. In under three and a half minutes Ramey lays out a tale of rape, murder and revenge as a group of women survivors ride out to exact frontier justice on the gang that destroyed their community and left them for dead. It’s dark and powerful, with haunting pedal steel and a galloping beat that matches the horses of the avenging angels that tell the tale. It’s tough and tragic and resonates with the thunder of horse’s hooves and the anticipation of the gun smoke to come. As openers go, you can’t do better.

As I noted, Ramey does both western and country, and it isn’t long until we get a country classic in “Scattered and Smothered” (the title of which is an homage to her old cover band of the same name). The darkness of “We Ride at Dawn” is replaced with a whimsical mid-tempo gallop. The entirety of this record features more clever turns of phrase than you can shake a six-gun at, but “Scattered and Smothered” may be my favourite of all, with an opening stanza of:

“Well it's 2 a.m. and I'm waffling
I've been somewhere I ain't supposed to been
And I'm looking like Alice Cooper
In a little black dress
Well I'm hot mess, I must confess
Ever since he brought up taking next steps
And my drunk ass needs
Some hash browns and scrambled eggs”

Ramey sings it all with a playful southern drawl and a gift for phrasing that is reminiscent of early Dolly Parton, minus the sweetness.

Ramey can also belt it out, as she does on “Six Feet Under” where she shows big lungs, peeling out rich notes that fill out every corner of the room.

“Six Feet Under” is one of many songs that feature imagery of graves and death. This is Gothic country at its best since Johnny Cash rumbled on about a long black veil. Other fine examples on “Villain Era” include “Dead to Me” and “Ghost Town”. The latter is a song that bemoans the loss of the classic country sound in favour of the polished pop version that now sadly dominates Nashville.

Ramey is also funny where the situation calls for it – notably on “Cult Money” about the snake oil salesmanship of false religion. Something that is made possible – as Ramey notes in the refrain – because “people’ll pay a whole lotta money/to stay outta hell.”

The musicianship on “Villain Era” is also top notch, with Ramey assembling a group of players that are up to the task of songs that require heavily on pinpoint timing and just the right amount of jump. I was pleased to note the appearance of Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore, bringing back fond memories of their work as country duo, The Mastersons.

The worst thing about “Villain Era” was finding out it was Ramey’s sixth record, meaning I have been living for years without her music, and didn’t have to. Consider that sad era at an end and sign me up for the Cult of Ramey. I won’t pay any money to stay outta hell, but I’ll happily spend for records like “Villain Era”.

Best tracks: We Ride at Dawn, Scattered and Smothered, Six Feet Under, Nobody’s Coming, Cult Money, Ghost Town

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