Amy Rigby

Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer stumbled into a redneck bar and fell in love with the sweet country music of cocktail waitress Lorlene Lumpkin? Amy Rigby has that effect on a lot of folks. On her fourth long player, Rigby blends western swing rhythms with country and folk songwriting for some truly engaging narratives.

Amy Rigby has stood out as one of music's most accurate reporters of the lives of working
class women, setting her songs to pop, country and folks sounds. She does it again on her
fourth effort, Til the Wheels Fall Off, a collection of tales about women who won't settle
down ("Shopping Around"), women who are a little too settled ("Are We Ever Gonna Have
Sex Again?") and women who struggle between resignation and hopefulness (ev... More >

Much as I love her songs, with this her best batch since her first, I love her singing them more. The way she starts the album by calmly drawling "I'm tired of bein' tired of bein'/Why am I always disagreein'" over murmured accordion and tick-tock percussion is so sturdy and so musical that it still catches me short. Outspokenly ordinary, she's hard on her man, hard on herself, hard on her life, which like most American lives is fairly hard. Although her romantic ups and downs aren't the disaster she believes sometimes, she really would like to know if she's "ever gonna have sex again." Answer--definitely. She's attractive if by some juvenile standards mature, and she feels the love in her and the lust in her at the same time, which always helps. If only the millions of women in her situation had the time and funds to test-drive alt-country CDs, she'd be as famous as Lucinda. (Grade - A-)