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Product Description
CD Description
"Excellent second album from young Texas fiddle-playing singer."--Maverick
West Cross Timbers was recorded in Nashville and co-produced with Rod Picott and David Henry. The eleven song collection features eight Shires penned originals, "Keep Them Dogs From Barkin'" co-written with Fiel, plus a cover of Picott's "Angels And Acrobats"l;the collection closes with the 1920s pop hit "Whispering".
Amanda has performed on concert stages with Billy Joe Shaver, Gary P Nunn, Old 97s, Ian Moore, Blue October, The Flatlanders, The Rowan Brothers, Andy Wilkinson, Whit Smith's Hot Jazz Caravan, Devotchka, Justin Townes Earle and many more. Musically speaking the world is her oyster, and she is a perfect pearl.
West Cross Timbers was recorded in Nashville and co-produced with Rod Picott and David Henry. The eleven song collection features eight Shires penned originals, "Keep Them Dogs From Barkin'" co-written with Fiel, plus a cover of Picott's "Angels And Acrobats"l;the collection closes with the 1920s pop hit "Whispering".
Amanda has performed on concert stages with Billy Joe Shaver, Gary P Nunn, Old 97s, Ian Moore, Blue October, The Flatlanders, The Rowan Brothers, Andy Wilkinson, Whit Smith's Hot Jazz Caravan, Devotchka, Justin Townes Earle and many more. Musically speaking the world is her oyster, and she is a perfect pearl.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
As alternative country artists go, she has a gravitas that contrasts with her breathy, girlish voice. Her long experience as a session musician shows in the confidence of her arrangements and the complex lyrics. If you're expecting Patsy Cline, you'll be disappointed, but if you like roots country and folk, this could be one of the better new albums out there.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I bought this CD after reading a good review in a specialised music magazine - I'd never heard of Amanda Shires before. Have to say I was disappointed - I expected something a bit meatier. Probably very good but just not to my taste
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Astonishing
5 April 2012
Format:Audio CD
Thrusts the artist squarely into the phalange seeking entry into the upper echelons of American songwriting. The song Mineral Wells is the most vitalizing folk song since Dylan's iconic Blowing in the Wind (1963) and the most important song in any genre since Leonard Cohen's Dance Me to the End of Love (1984). This autobiographical song speaks out of a distinct time and place yet transcends that milieu to speak to a universal metaphor of existential homelessness; a piece of sonic poetry so penetrating as to compare favorably with T.S Eliot's "East Coker" yet epitomizes everything that William Carlos Williams fought for in poetry. An aural masterpiece.
The rest of the song collection isn't too shabby, either. It is no easy task to find, let alone vividly express, the universal in the parochial. The opening song Upon Hearing Violins, Angels and Acrobats, and the closing song Whispering display the artist's affinity for West Texas honky tonk. While they are fine examples of the genre they seemed designed directly for the 'quarter in the jukebox bar crowd'. Satisfying enough, they invigorate the tradition without bringing anything new to it except the pleasing vibrato of the singer's voice. On the other hand, Keep Them Dogs from Barkin', I Kept Watch Like Doves, and Rings and Chains seek a universal touchstone while at best hinting at some specific ground of experience. Some of the best lines of the CD come from these songs such as the startling lines "let's be horses in the sheets" and "we had a deal to just be shadows" from Rings and Chains and the opening lines of I Kept Watch Like Doves
"You said and you swore
We were bound in love forever
Did you really think I'd let you go.
Unscathed, I don't think so."
manages to crush romanticism under a gritty realism while foreshadowing the speaker's own pain from killing her lover over an adulterous affair.
Coalescing in the middle of this struggle between the universal and local is Mineral Wells where transcendence is found in personal biography. I cannot escape a sense of astonishment that West Texas could have produced such an artist matched by the obvious fact that no place other than West Texas could have produced her. This CD needs to come with a warning sticker: genius at work.
The rest of the song collection isn't too shabby, either. It is no easy task to find, let alone vividly express, the universal in the parochial. The opening song Upon Hearing Violins, Angels and Acrobats, and the closing song Whispering display the artist's affinity for West Texas honky tonk. While they are fine examples of the genre they seemed designed directly for the 'quarter in the jukebox bar crowd'. Satisfying enough, they invigorate the tradition without bringing anything new to it except the pleasing vibrato of the singer's voice. On the other hand, Keep Them Dogs from Barkin', I Kept Watch Like Doves, and Rings and Chains seek a universal touchstone while at best hinting at some specific ground of experience. Some of the best lines of the CD come from these songs such as the startling lines "let's be horses in the sheets" and "we had a deal to just be shadows" from Rings and Chains and the opening lines of I Kept Watch Like Doves
"You said and you swore
We were bound in love forever
Did you really think I'd let you go.
Unscathed, I don't think so."
manages to crush romanticism under a gritty realism while foreshadowing the speaker's own pain from killing her lover over an adulterous affair.
Coalescing in the middle of this struggle between the universal and local is Mineral Wells where transcendence is found in personal biography. I cannot escape a sense of astonishment that West Texas could have produced such an artist matched by the obvious fact that no place other than West Texas could have produced her. This CD needs to come with a warning sticker: genius at work.
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