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Heather Leigh Murray, "There's a Brunette Up In Tulsa That Cries for Me"
With Heather Leigh turning her pedal steel loose on audiences across Europe, this live disc is more sonically aggressive than her previous releases. In performance Heather might have usually sat static at her pedal steel tearing at the strings, but the sounds still have the ability to rear up and forward like some venom sluicing cobra. Her evolution towards something between the state of song and primacy continues, but this time with sinews motorized by force.
Murray's music always brings to mind the idea of sinew, of something organic and muscular but twisted and reformed in a funhouse mirror. "It Dreamed To Me" is a howl, a tone screaming tail lash where treble and Murray merge. The phosphorescent glow of this amalgam pulls at time like strings of chewing gum, Murray delivering pre-folk modes of song. This unconscious primal lament turns to irrational rant, a disorientating swoon of psychedelic shimmer. This opener also features a respite of harmonica playing, the sound rooted to both the desert states of America and of the mind.
Americana is also present in the title of "Railroad Flats," a piece of straight up gone and a paean to slo-mo drowning. This blistering purge of creased light is a turned up roar, drowning out the world in a Haino overdrive. This lengthy tract of split blood and tension is probably her heaviest molten metal yet. Beginning with solo vocals, "Alto Purus Mashco Piro" is the odd lulling warmth of an instrument born for war. This choral melody is soon violated by the falling rain streaks of the accompanying pedal notes. While it is certainly loud, it is not fierce as it predecessor, relying more on tolling play than eye boiling.
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