ALBUM REVIEW: Sarah Borges Rocks and Rolls With Pandemic Realities on ‘Together Alone’
Grant Britt
Posted On February 16, 2022
Sarah Borges is an enigma wrapped in a shapeshifting cloak that transforms her from a Beantown denizen to a rockin’ Southern belle. Borges forsakes her Boston upbringing when she sings, sounding like a smooth blend of Lucinda Williams and Rickie Lee Jones. “I had to get rid of the accent,” she admitted after a show a few years back. “It was too easy for people to make fun of.” But nobody makes fun of her these days. Since her 2005 debut, Silver City, Borges has racked up a horde of followers and fans of her edgy, twangy, rocky Americana.
For her latest album, Together Alone, Borges (“rhymes with gorgeous,” she tells emcees unfamiliar with her surname) has a new crop of in-your-face twangy rockers bucked up with the help of producer/guitarist Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (Joan Jett, Steve Earle, Nils Lofgren, Jimbo Mathis), who assembled the cast remotely during the direst days of the pandemic. Ambel put the songs together by pasting Borges’ cellphone-recorded vocals, recorded in a clothes closet at her home, atop contributions from a bunch of roughshod rockers, including Bottle Rockets bassist Keith Voegele and Skynyrd bassist Keith Christopher (the latter was Ambel’s bandmate in supergroup The Yayhoos). NRBQ drummer John Perrin also propels the backbeat on a couple of tracks.
The cumulative effect soaks up that rattly, rockin’ Yayhoos energy and slides in a twang and a thump to knock you around some. “Lucky Day” sounds like The Go-Gos gone country with Lucinda Williams out front.
“Wouldn’t Know You,” a collab with Ambel and Voegele, sounds like it fell off the Georgia Satellites truck, a snaky rocker with a wake-up call to a strung-out musician so pilled-up and weed-weary that his own mama wouldn’t know him.
But it’s not all leap-up-and-down boogie. On the introspective title cut, Borges shows she can break your heart while her own is shattering as well, sharing the symptoms of a case of slow-rollin’ love miseries exacerbated by time and distance.
Real-life pandemic squeezes inspired “She’s a Trucker,” which chronicles Borges’ days as an airport courier to supplement lost gig income. “Rubber rolling, well it turned my head around,” she proclaims. “Only forward motion, there ain’t nothing draggin’ me down.”
Borges proves she’s a survivor, coming out of it stronger than ever, still gorgeously twangin’ and rockin’ down the road.
