• ALBUM REVIEW: Jenny Don’t and the Spurs Dig Into a Western State of Mind

    Artist:
    Album:
    Grant Britt Posted On June 13, 2024
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    Jenny Don’t must have gotten tangled up in Wanda Jackson’s DNA somewhere along the line.

    Cowpunkery is Don’t’s advertised stock-in-trade, but Jackson’s rockabilly heart bleeds into her music like a busted artery squirting in all directions. For her latest, Broken Hearted Blue, Don’t and her trio — bassist Kelly Halliburton, guitarist Christopher March and drummer Buddy Weeks — trot out a lively collection of thumpers and twangers.

    “Pain in My Heart” was one of Otis Redding’s most soulful offerings. Though they share a title, Don’t’s original goes in an entirely different direction. March’s guitar twangs away like a pedal steel as Don’t confesses she treated her man poorly but has had a change of heart and now wants to give him her honky-tonk heart.

    Donning a sultry shimmy for “Unlucky in Love,” Don’t protests that as an unlucky fool in matters of the heart, she’s not good enough for her adorable one, then adds a caveat: “But at least I’m something.”

     

     

    Set to a Bo Diddley thump and stomp, “My Baby’s Gone” lets Don’t unleash her inner Wanda, erupting in a fiery geyser as March tosses in fistfuls of splashy twang to puddle at her feet.

    The framework for “One More Night” is blues, at least till Don’t chimes in with some lonesome flatlander cowpunkery. March sidles up with a Marty Robbins psychedelic country and western flavor to add to the shimmery mirage. “Jealous Heart” sounds like a ’60s entry on the country and western hit parade with a Duane Eddy guitar contribution that slides into Dick Dale-inspired surf rock.

    This isn’t one-label-fits-all material. Even though the cows are punking and twanging, there are all sorts of stylistic goodies bubbling up to keep your ears on high alert. But sonically and aesthetically, Broken Hearted Blue provides a nice dip in the bygone C&W timestream that works as well today as it did back then.

     

     

    Jenny Don’t and the Spurs’ Broken Hearted Blue is out June 14 on Fluff and Gravy Records.




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