Time’s a rodeo. Or so sayeth Dawn Landes – better half of crossover folk-country type, Josh Ritter and sometime member of Hem. And whilst I’m not sure exactly what it is she’s trying to say (I mean, I was reliably informed by Garth Brooks that it’s bulls and blood, dust and mud and the roar of a Sunday crowd – but I could be getting it mixed up with Sunday League football, so I don’t know). Whatever it is though, the dreamy little prairie rose with the snoozy, syrupy voice is hanging onto it. And maybe that’s the point: life’s fast, it’s hard, it’s shits on you from time to time and you have a hell of a time just trying not to fall off, which is probably why Landes makes an early appeal on the record to those young enough to find love, to steer wrestle the volatile thing before it ever gets a chance to buck and leaves you looking like an arse. So what we have is by turns a scuzzy, feisty brew of icy, womanly bravado (‘Young Girl’), lonesome whimsicality (complete with honky-tonks and the clippety-clopping of coconut hooves) and slightly skewed, dust storm psychedelia (the Margot Guryan penned ‘Love’ – a song that has more holes in its shoe than Traffic). And what an absorbing and slightly irreverent mix it all is too, made all the more attractive because of Landes’s ability to mosey along at her own pace, rope in a bevy of odd sounds and generally lark around. In fact it must be the aural equivalent of being locked in some last chance saloon and finding yourself dropping acid with a maverick collection of freaks, fools and grizzly fur traders. Even if the actual traditions that drive the songs are fairly conventional by modern standards, the woozy, slacker vibe of songs like, ‘Wandering Eye’ suggest an education squared-off with Gram Parsons but riddled with the quirky lessons of Beck, The Beatles and ‘broken bunnies’ like Dory Previn and Cat Power.
’Sweet Heart Rodeo’ was recorded in Brooklyn and features Gary Maurer from Hem on guitar and mandolin.
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’Little Miss Holiday’/’Brighton’ – the first song as skittish as a kitten and the second as lazy as the fog on a river in December. Gorgeous.