Laura Cantrell
Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions
Propeller Sound Recordings
9 June 2023
Laura Cantrell‘s Just Like a Rose: The Anniversary Sessions was initially intended to mark the 20th anniversary of her 2000 debut album, Not The Tremblin’ Kind, but it was placed on the back burner due to the pandemic. Cantrell finally gets to wheel out the birthday cake with party guests like Steve Earle and Buddy Miller. Despite what the title may suggest, this isn’t a reworking of old material, save for a revisit of When The Roses Bloom Again, a Jeff Tweedy title track from her second album, here in company with Earle on vocals, Miller on twangy electric guitar and Uilleann pipes from Ivan Goff.
Cantrell kicks the party off with the lively organ-driven bounce of Push the Swing as she offers advice to a potential suitor (“I can’t be your confidante/I can’t be your long lost pal/If I’m not the one you want just tell me so right now/I can’t say that this won’t hurt/Who can say the wasp won’t sting?/But if I drag you through the dirt, darlin it didn’t mean a thing”), moving on to the steel-laced old school country of Bide My Time (the second co-write with Mark Winchester) which, produced by Don Fleming and David Mansfield, muses on the need to move on from hurt.
One of two produced by Rosie Flores, who also contributes electric and acoustic guitar alongside harmonies with Siobhan Maher Kennedy on both, Brand New Eyes is an Amy Rigby cover from the early 90s, given a 60s girl group vibe in tribute to the late Ronnie Spector. The second follows, a twangy strutting title track which is itself a tribute to Flores (“Don’t take a thousand watts and a Marshall stack. She’s got an old Telecaster and a Fender black/Her stuff will knock you out, draw you in/You’re gonna feel that sound come up under your skin”).
The pace slows for Secret Language, a dreamy love song (“You and I share a secret language/Ours alone, no one else can understand it”) where, with echoes of Kitty Wells, she’s backed by Lambchop’s Paul Burch and his current band, the WPA Ballclub, with Fats Kaplan on pedal steel and Jen Gunderman on piano and harmony. Equally laid back with a jazzy New York wash, Unaccompanied is the first of two co-writes with Fred Wilhelm, a college colleague from the 80s, on which she reminiscences about roaming the city subways in search of music (“Out in the club don’t know a soul but my friend at the gate outside/He let me in because I couldn’t find a friend to go with me on a Tuesday night/It was spontaneous, might sound crazy but I just wanted to dance”) and happy to be on her own. It’s followed by the wistful, reflective I’m Gonna Miss This Town with its jaunty chorus as she contemplates of things change, balancing the then of “A Catholic church, a Baptist church/Come Monday morning everyone got back to work/Post office and a bank where they knew my name/Smile and a thanks with my receipt and change/Norman Rockwell couldn’t paint it any better” with the now of “The cross walk paint is peeling up/The houses have grown bigger and cost twice as much/They’re renting by the week at the Budgetel/Where the cashier wears a flag pin in his lapel/My mother wonders why I don’t visit more/Every time I’m here I just miss it more”.
Jazzy flavours resurface on the shuffle waltzing retro groove of Joe Flood’s Good Morning Mr Afternoon, the second to feature Burch and co, with its brushed drums and saloon piano.
It ends with, first, Holding You In My Heart, Mansfield on fiddle, mandolin and accordion, a song about maintaining connections despite distances between (“Missed your call on Sunday, tried you back on Monday/Can’t seem to get the timing right, try again tomorrow night/We both get so busy, there’s a thousand things it could be/But we’ll catch up one of these days, and if we don’t that’s ok/When the miles are too much, and the hours are too long/When you think you’re not here with me you’re wrong”).
And finally comes AWM – Bless, a co-write with guitarist Mark Spencer that was recorded back in 2018 as a fundraiser for the League of Women Voters in the run up to the mid-term elections (“Some people say Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves/And a woman’s right to vote is one that Congress made/Both things are true but the pictures not complete/Til you color in the people lining the streets/Not asking for forgiveness, a favor, or a loan/They just hit the point home, their humanity’s their own”), and the only political number on the album with its snapshot of the disaffected ‘angry white men’ who’d “have us believe/You’re beset and besieged, your reputations are aggrieved”. Namechecking Mavis Staples and Will Campbell, a bootleg white Mississippi preacher who marched with King at Selma “who’d “remind the people who came to hear him preach/Salvation is not for one side, it’s not just meant for you and me/So he prayed with the bigots, and he’d pray for the KKK”, she sings “I’m angry too/That is what we have in common, I’m exactly like you/But on further reflection, I’ve come to believe/Some days the pain and the fear get the better of me” and, echoing Campbell, asks “ if I bless your heart/Would you bless my heart?”. It’s been nine years since Cantrell last released an album; this comeback is a glorious affirmation that she’s not lost her magical touch.
Order/Stream: Just Like a Rose
Laura Cantrell UK Shows:
| 23-Jun | Leeds | Brudenell Social Club |
| 26-Jun | Milton Keynes | The Stables |
| 27-Jun | Sunderland | The Fire Station |
| 28-Jun | Glasgow | Saint Lukes |
| 29-Jun | Hebden Bridge | Trades |
| 30-Jun | London | Union Chapel |
| 01-Jul | Easton Farm Park | Maverick Festival |
| 03-Jul | Birmingham | Kitchen Garden Café |
| 04-Jul | Nottingham | The Old Cold Store |
| 05-Jul | Manchester | Night & Day |
| 06-Jul | Hassocks | Mid Sussex Music Hall |
| 07-Jul | Twyford (Winchester) | St Mary’s Church |
| 09-Jul | Bristol | Hen & Chicken |
| 10-Jul | Oxford | Wesley Memorial Church |
Support on all shows will be Doug Levitt. https://www.douglevitt.com/