Shannon McNally
follows up her aesthetic and critical breakthrough,
Geronimo
, with a live record on
Backporch
. First off, the title is interesting in how it relates to the set itself. Basically, she's reliving her own ghosts with five tunes from the aforementioned recording and two from her major-label debut,
Jukebox Sparrows
. In fact, she opens with a raw, completely supercharged reading of
"Bolder Than Paradise,"
singing it with a rasp and burning guitars, pulling it out of the past and putting it in front of a crowd as something that has been shape-shifted out from under the production team's hands. This is the way the song should have always sounded. It's immediate, lean, wild, and barely contained inside her throat as she all but spits out the lyrics as the band rides high behind her. The same goes for
"Down and Dirty,"
also from
Jukebox
, which finds itself left empty of its original meaning and treatment and here actually returns to the grit and mud-soaked
R&B
intention of its songwriter in the grain of her voice. Of the songs from
, the spirit was always there. Just listen to
"Sweet Forgiveness"
and one can hear in
McNally
's voice -- over
Wallace Lester
's drums,
Dave Easley
's churning six-string, and
David Stocker
's keyboards -- the traces of those who left the imprint on the song's protagonist, the traces of rage, pain, and suffering on a woman who has no intention of paying them back in kind. Musically, one can hear traces of
the Band
when they played live and loose,
John Mellencamp
at his finest, the hard
country-rock
of
Jason & the Scorchers
, and (in
"Weathervane"
) the steely-eyed unsentimental look at the world of
Kris Kristofferson
. There are a pair of covers here as well. There's a fine version of
John Dawson
's (remember
the New Riders of the Purple Sage
?)
country
lament
"The Last Lonely Eagle,"
and a gorgeous version of
Sharon Vaughn
's
"My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys."
Ultimately, this album may be a stopover between studio recordings, or just another shot to boost
's visibility. Either way, it doesn't matter. It's raw and immediate, and captures her at her best. ~ Thom Jurek