Category | Arts & Living

Another great album from Tift Merritt

Published on March 11, 2008 by The Sentinel

    Texas-born, North Carolina raised Tift Merritt can sing.  Not with
Neko Case’s soul or Faith Hill’s range, but with her own soft,
reserved, at times intense, beauty.  Her new album “Another Country”
showcases her vocal gifts, along with her strength as a song writer and
musician.  Anybody who listened to Tift before shouldn’t be surprised;
2002’s “Bramble Rose” won critical acclaim and charted the
pitch-perfect single “Virginia, No One Can Warn You.”

    Her follow-up, “Tambourine,” took the alt-country formula and added some soul, with horn arrangements and bigger, bolder vocals.  The critics took notice too, nominating “Tambourine” for a Country Album of the Year Grammy in  2004. 

    “Another Country,” her third album, doesn’t pick up where “Tambourine” left off.  Instead it sees Tift heading back in the direction of her first album, with a softer, more reserved sound.  That’s not to say “Another Country” doesn’t rock, though, because at times it does. 

    Songs like “Broken,” the first single, the funky, Motown-esque “Tell Me Something True,” and “My Heart is Free” are all hard, driving songs.  Tift is at her best when she’s strumming hard and singing loud, but the slower tracks are gorgeous as well.  The title-track “Another Country” is a standout, with Tift singing sweetly “Love is another country and I want to go too.  I want to go with you.”  Her voice hypnotizes at times, too, as on “Hopes Too High” where she culls us into her album with a combination of guitar, harmonica, and vocals.  Whether rocking or hypnotizing, though, her voice is the main attraction. 

    What sets Tift Merritt apart from other country, alt-country, roots-rock, or Americana artists is that she can’t be pigeonholed.  At times she sounds comfortable singing Memphis-inspired soul, at times Dolly Parton-like country, at times Kathleen Edwards-ish rocking. 

    Calling her the female version of Ryan Adams is tempting, but that wouldn’t be accurate.  Where Adams dabbles in many genres separately (and very successfully) from album to album and song to song, Merritt somehow blends all her influences into one, cohesive package that pervades each minute of her music. 

    At all times one thing and at all times another, as an Eastern philosopher probably once said.  Regardless, you should buy this album.