Laura Cantrell, pictured, may have swum against the country-music tide by being born in Nashville and moving to New York while others are drawn to the Tennessee music mecca, but her music retains its rustic roots.
On previous visits to Glasgow the woman who takes pride in recording for local label Spit & Polish and calling the city her second home has worked with bands and has benefited from the fuller sound. For this return as part of the Glasgow Americana festival she was accompanied by guitarist Mark Spencer in a duo that felt a little ad hoc and left Cantrell's vocals a mite exposed.
But their set had a certain hand-knitted charm, especially when she and Spencer came off-mic to sing the endearingly naïve Whiskey Makes You Sweeter, and there was a core realism to these songs of sleep-loss, love-sickness and fragile armour. The juxtaposition of Cantrell's Kitty Wells Dresses and the late honky tonk star's own 1950s hit Making Believe underlined just how much attention Cantrell has paid to her heroine's blueprint as a writer, and No Way There from Here further emphasised the melodic quality she brings to bear.
If Texan Darden Smith's contribution was a relatively brief support slot for a singer-songwriter of his long standing and solid record, he was anything but a makeweight.
The songs he accompanied on his nylon-strung guitar especially, including the opening, melodically, harmonically and lyrically inventive I Smell Smoke, showcased a talent who is not content to stand still artistically, and on both Seven Wonders and Angel Flight he fashioned tricky concepts into convincing end products.
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