Amy Rigby: Hang In There With Me – album review

If you have read the LTW Interview and  her memoir you know Amy Rigby is a great American songwriter, the wife of Wreckless Eric and that this album has been a long time coming after some tumultuous years. It’s probably her best work, where Americana meets Garage Psych with a feminine touch. Basically they’re just great songs though, says Ged Babey, about life, death, art, the struggle and the importance of having a cool hair-style. 

Try your whole life to make something that matters / Chords chime, words rhyme, paint spatters / Get out the camera, take a shot you wanna capture / Madness, sadness, sunsets, rapture…

This is an album about how only art & music can save us. Only it can’t. As we get older, people die, ‘shit happens’ and there’s nothing we can do about it. All we can do is cry, laugh and keep going, making that art, writing those songs, hugging your loved ones and counting remaining blessings.

Opening with a short song called Hell-Oh Sixty and following it with one called Too Old To Be So Crazy sets the scene and establishes one of the recurring themes of getting old(er), mortality and taking stock in Hang In There With Me.  What could be a maudlin and morose album though is in fact life-affirming and strangely uplifting for the most part.

The last two songs, Heart Is A Muscle and Last Night’s Rainbow are the shortest and fastest and don’t sound like a 65 year old who has been ground down by life. I’m gonna burn down everything in my path she rages.

On Too Old... Amy asks herself why the hell is she still playing ‘psychedelic Country rock’ at small venues at her grand old age. She should be ‘kicking back’.

The definition of insanity /  According to Albert E / Is to repeat the same action / Expecting it all to end differently /  That sounds a lot like me

They are brilliantly simple, self-analytical songs but she is both grounded and still has her head in the clouds as she concludes.

This way of life it never made much sense / But in my own defense / I didn’t choose, it just picked me / I’ve tried a thousand times to give it up /  Fall down and fuck it up /  You can call it a victory. /  Trust the mystery

One song namechecks British film director Mike Leigh and the press release says:  Her music is the sound of everyday people getting by, just like the country artists she loved and learned to write songs from. And:  Like some people turn to the moon and stars for inspiration, Amy Rigby looks to creative heroes like Bob Dylan and Mike Leigh.

So, this is ‘Americana’ but with an Anglophiles outlook and sense of the absurdity of life.  This is what separates Amy Rigby from other US female ‘Country/Rock’ artists, thankfully.

Dylan In Dubuque was inspired by a notorious nineties Bob Dylan concert in Iowa, where a lack of security led to chaos and a nonstop stage invasion that Bob simply took in his stride. If only we could all be so unphased when things get weird !  (Says Amy)

So many great lines in the Stones-y strut of a song! Like And I’ll aim this Telecaster and I’ll shoot it at the stars.-and  every straight guy needs a kook.  Which prove, if anything that Amy Rigby is a rockin’ poet to equal any male contemporary let alone outclassing the female ones.

Bad In A Good Way is the longest song and recalls Lou Reed, Shangri La’s, Jeffery Lewis, Bob Dylan and is a word-dense portrait, which may be set at a funeral of a ladies man old-school fuck-weasel…

Bricks is the most inspiring break-up song you’ll hear where the hurt and anger is turned into determination and industriousness as the the dumped partner gets on with building the planned patio herself.

There are two good things about this album: the words and the music. The magic is how the two combine to create portraits, chapters in the life of and display the wit, charm, determination and humanity of Amy Rigby.  Framed and complemented beautifully by Erics garage-rock guitar, fuzzy psych and warm production. (A guitar sound which sounds like the stuttering engine of a light aircraft banking and coming into land is my favourite.)

After listening to the album a hundred times, delaying publication of this review, as I wanted to make sure, I can honestly say that Hang In There With Me is an absolute masterpiece, a career best, a stand-out within and outside it’s genre. A bold claim you might think, but it’s because there are few singer songwriters with this kind of utter authenticity and charm.

UK Tour Dates  November 2024

6th November BBC 6 Music Riley & Coe session
7th November Glasgow The Doublet
8th November Edinburgh The Banshee Labyrinth
10th November Lindisfarne Pilgrimage to the Islands festival
12th November Brighton Prince Albert
17th November London The Waiting Room (Simon Love will do the support!)
20th November Swansea The Bunkhouse
21st November Bristol Hen & Chicken
22nd November Hastings The Pig
27th November Nottingham Running Horse

Buy from Bandcamp

Buy from Tapete Records

Links
amyrigby.com
diaryofamyrigby.wordpress.com
Twitter

All words  Ged Babey