Sep 17, 2015 Music
Ebony Lamb, who writes these songs and sings them in an assured, swooning country croon, deserves something a little better defined and gritty than the adept but slightly perfunctory performances of her Wellington-based backing band on this, her second long-form spin.
Lamb comes up with some nice lines and scenarios on Sun/Son, like the single “Coward Son” with its raunchy “hands down my thighs”, and the horror of being stuck in “Hungry Little Town” at midnight.
There’s an old-timey swing feel to many of these songs, and Lamb knows how to wrap her tonsils around her words, and how to bend the notes for maximum impact, and at times there’s just a touch of Janis Joplin’s parched emotion. Yep, she has that fetching ability to sound both tough and broken at the same time.
For all that, a better record would have resulted from some judicious pruning. Culling that blasted trumpet may have helped, for starters.
