Sally Timms – Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments…For Lost Buckaroos
Rock critic version: Sally Timms, the honey-voiced Mekons chanteuse who released a brilliant 1997 EP on Bloodshot, returns with a stunning full-length album of country cowgirl tunes, including new compositions by alt-country stalwarts Robbie Fulks, the Handsome Family and ever-maturing Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. One reason the disc is so different from Nashville’s mainstream product is that it has a country and western vibe, which you never hear on country radio, with the exception of the occasional George Strait number or the Dixie Chicks’ cover of “Roly Poly”, which the Handsome Family’s Brett Sparks sings on Bloodshot’s The Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute The Majesty Of Bob Wills, an album that also features Timms’ lovely rendition of “Right Or Wrong”, blah blah blah blah.
Drugstore novella version: The album cover depicts a sexy, 40-year-old British singer in a gingham dress, seated atop a bale of hay. Like one of the sunflowers growing nearby, her soft visage is tilted toward the light. You remove the disc and insert it. Once it starts spinning, so does your head: That voice, the steel drums, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, sleigh bells, and pedal steel guitar emanate from your speakers like thick smoke filling a room. In a woozy delirium, you remove those boots and slide on the headphones. Soon, you’re drunk with it, but you don’t care. You want more. You crave it. You can’t go on without it. The CD player becomes soiled with your oily fingerprints because you’ve spun the disc incessantly. At dawn, the two halves of your brain are gently split apart by the strong stalk of a sunflower that has taken root in your frightened, newly enlightened heart. Your visage seeks the light.