JUNE 2009 ONLINE EDITORIALS

Angie Stevens - Queen of this Mess

By Nathan Harper

At one point on her latest album Angie Stevens name-checks Neko Case, and that’s a good enough jumping off point as any to understand the sound on her latest foray into country melancholia. For not merely emulating her heroes, as so many other Colorado acts do, but building on them as one influence among many, she has my utmost respect. Stevens, like Case, is more singer/songwriter than Nashville twang, and this skirting of boundaries is what makes her interesting. Whether she could ever find a home commercially speaks to the unimaginative world of pop music, but that’s another rant.

A country girl who’s now living in the big city, perhaps the most telling remnant of Stevens’ time spent on the north plains can be heard as she sings select a’s and e’s throughout the record. In her country girl phonetics they turn from single syllable vowels into rusticated shibboleths – to wit, her “he” almost rhymes with buoy. If you don’t have a taste for this sort of thing it can start to grate.

But these are minor quibbles. Queen of this Mess is a solid release, and though it loses some impetus on the second half, there’s no doubt that Stevens means every word she says. For this record she said that she tried to make it a more down-home recording with fewer takes, basic instrumentation and no-frills production, but even if she had made it sound like an Abba record, or worse yet, a Taylor Swift record, her honest, earnest delivery would still come through.