Beth Bombara
It All Goes Up
Black Mesa Records
4 August 2023
‘It All Goes Up’, the sixth album by Missouri resident, Beth Bombara, is the perfect summer road trip album; the songs will carry on delivering long after the sun goes down and the miles will fly by.
Album opener Moment starts with a filmic wash of pedal steel and brushed drums, a gentle heat-haze rising from the tarmac, but never lapses into a dreamy, clichéd Americana. Bombara’s voice keeps the wheels on the road, and honesty and sincerity pour from her. It’s a statement of intent for this record – old-fashioned without being retro, beautiful without being winsome, classic without being obvious.
Conceived during lockdown, Lonely Walls speaks to everyone who missed someone during that weird time. Bombara is precise in her phrasing, a clear-headed entreaty to the world where she says, “I’m not asking for anything crazy”; she simply wants love and friendship back again. It’s this simplicity that characterises the album; these are genuinely great songs, beautifully sung with enough Americana highway dust and grit to keep it real.
If there’s one track that shines brightest, then Everything I Wanted is it. A sun-kissed 70s Country rocker. It’s upbeat and sunny, immediately throwing you back to a time of freedom when there were no cares or responsibilities. It’s a place you could live in forever.
Across the whole of It All Goes Up, there’s a feeling of we’ve-all-been-through-this-but-look-what’s-coming optimism that even the slowest tracks seem to carry. Get On sweeps in on lush guitar waves, while Carry the Weight adds violin, reflecting a different kind of light through the windshield. While slow in tempo, both offer a sunshine-bright dazzle, a gloriously accomplished sliver of pure Americana.
The album’s two sides are beautifully captured, once again, in Curious & Free and Give Me a Reason. The first is reflective, gentle and buoyed on an acoustic guitar, a violin creeping in to add poignancy, while the latter is grungier but still shot through with warmth and positivity. The production of Electricity by Kit Hamon is pure 70s bliss, and What You Wanna Hear adds a merest hint of Bosa Nova Country, somehow reminiscent of Laura Cantrell or Devon Sproule. This is music where every frustration is carefully placed to one side to allow the glow of hope to fill the horizon, where every cliché is, very gently, steered around, and Bombara’s voice makes you sit up and take notice.
Some days, when the tail lights of the M5 seem too much to bear, we all need some wonderful songs to hurry our journey along. It All Goes Up is stuffed with them; the miles will fly by.
Order It’s All Up via Bandcamp (LP/CD/Digital): https://bethbombara.bandcamp.com/album/it-all-goes-up