ALBUM REVIEW: Ghalia Volt Supercharges Her Sound on ‘Shout Sister Shout!’
Grant Britt
Posted On October 11, 2023
Ghalia Volt doesn’t need any help getting her oomph on. For her latest, Shout Sister Shout!, she comes out roarin’ and stompin’.
Ghalia Volt (photo by Kaylie McCarthy)
The Belgian busker honed her craft on the streets of Brussels before coming to New Orleans, hooking up with locals Mama’s Boys for her 2017 debut, Let the Demons Out. She recorded her 2019 follow-up, Mississippi Blend, in Coldwater, Mississippi, showcasing her Hill Country leanings with help from Cedric Burnside, Lightnin’ Malcolm, Watermelon Slim, and Cody Dickinson. Shortly afterward, Volt began experimenting with a one-woman band, providing percussion with her feet on a full drum kit including tambourine while singing and playing guitar. She released One Woman Band in 2021.
She continues that approach somewhat on Shout Sister Shout!, but accepts some instrumental help from producer David Catching (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal), who contributes guitar on a few tracks, plus drummer Danny Frankel and keyboardist Ben Alleman. Recorded at Catching’s Rancho de La Luna Studio in Joshua Tree, California, the record attempts to capture some of the magical musical properties of the desert location that has attracted artists as diverse as Daniel Lanois, Iggy Pop, The Artic Monkeys, and Joe Walsh and was a place of solace and inspiration for country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons.
Volt looks like a rockabilly goddess from the ’50s with her pouffed-up pompadour and leather attire, and she sings like a harder rocking Wanda Jackson and plays guitar like a stone age queen.
“Every Cloud” sounds like she’s picking with a railroad spike. Although it has the bomp of a balls-out rocker, it has a Hill Country drone punctuated by Alleman’s organ stutters. “Changes” is a whoop-it-up, slam-bang psychedelic guitar-driven rockabilly rave-up.
The title cut takes inspiration from Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s 1942 take-no-prisoners manifesto for women’s rights. “There ain’t no reason why a man’s so simple,” Tharpe proclaims, encouraging her sisterhood to shout out for their freedom. Volt takes it one step farther, insisting over a Hill Country drone that “Today, sister, is the day, when we’re not letting things go.”
Volt closes it out with the rattly rockabilly anthem “Po’ Boy John,” which sounds like a mashup of Huey “Piano” Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, and Wanda Jackson kicking apart a juke joint and dancing on the splinters.
Volt has whipped up a helluva thang here, a relentless, blistering heat-seeking missile you can’t escape even if you wanted to. Surrender, enjoy, and display your scars proudly.
Ghalia Volt’s Shout Sister Shout! was released Oct. 6 on Ruf Records.
