Read more...
                        

                            
When country music newcomer Rachel Harrington welcomes you to her website with a look from puppy-dog eyes, she slightly reminds this visitor of Michelle Pfeiffer.  Hard to say whether that’ll work to her advantage in the rough music biz.  It’s an undisputable fact, however, that Harrington’s debut album is practically bursting with musicality.  In 2004 she released a self-produced EP that gained her some attention in relevant circles but stayed mostly under the radar in Germany.  The new album is bound to rectify that.

“The Bootlegger’s Daughter” impresses with high-quality country songs in mostly acoustic arrangements with a few moments of delicate electric guitar or gentle pedal steel (especially on the beautiful “Walk to You”).  This album resonates with an aura of calm, softness, tenderness, and casual, un-agitated instrumental mastery.  Masterful mandolin runs, beautiful dobro parts and pedal steel moans provide highlights.  The band sounds like they’ve been playing together for an eternity – which is not the case, but all the musicians are class acts.  A great contributing factor is the album’s natural, free-flowing, clear sound.

Rachel Harrington is influenced by traditional country music and her debut album conveys the feeling of a relaxed living room jam or back porch picking party.  One might argue that Harrington is using clichés – but that’s only true insofar as she employs tried and true woods to build a brand new, splendid home and grace it with a female touch.

To my ears, this is the most beautiful country record of the year so far.  The colossal debut of a most promising artist.
                            Read more...
                        

                            
Bootlegger’s Daughter releases a strong debut

It’s about 8.00pm I’m stuck on the M25 near Heathrow Airport, I’m going nowhere.. Bob Harris country show is on Radio 2 and up comes a record by Rachel Harrington. All of a sudden I can see a way out of this traffic nightmare…

Rachel was raised among the Pentecostal pines of Oregon has had fairly extensive airplay in the US, and has opened shows for such luminaries as Shawn Colvin, Todd Snider and Fred Eaglesmith.

On this record Harrington is joined by a host some top-notch musicians and mixes the repertoire between bluegrass, folk, country and traditional gospel. It’s very much a traditional Americana record; best heard on the track ‘Blow-the ballad of the bill miner’. Rachel has self-penned most of the songs on this her debut – apart from a cover of Laura Veirs song ‘Up The River’ and a John Hurt song, the evocative ‘Louis Collins’.

Blending traditional sounds of American music, and whilst this record is steeped in the past, it has an oddly current feel: Rachel’s voice is one of the many highlights of this record.

By the way it was 10.30pm before I got off the ‘road to hell’ but at least I had chance to listen to Bob Harris and Rachel Harrington.
                            Read more...
                        

                            
Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch... Rachel Harrington!  These kinds of top-notch comparisons don't seem far-fetched at all given the extraordinary excellence of this likeable Seattle musician's debut album.
 
Currently she's creating quite a stir in all kinds of Americana charts on both sides of the Atlantic with her handmade acoustic sound between folk and country with a dash of bluegrass. Many a singer-songwriter aficionado who has seen her on German stages with Markus Rill a few years ago will fondly remember her.
 
That was but a sample, this here's definitely the real stuff! "The Bootlegger's Daughter" features ten tracks: Seven smashing original compositions plus "Up The River" by her better-known colleague Laura Veirs, Mississippi John Hurt's "Louis Collins" and "Farther Along" - an invitation to a gospel singalong as album closer. 
 
Harrington's voice is wonderfully appropriate to this kind of music conveying sadness and hope at the same time while sounding quite natural and original. The album features a host of well-known studio cracks like pedal steelers Marty Muse (Dwight Yoakam, R.E. Keen) and Mike Grigoni (Korby Lenker), Zak Borden (Willy Mason), Danny Barnes (Tim O'Brien, Bad Livers) am Banjo, John Reischmann (Laurie Lewis, Neko Case), and others.
                            Read more...