Blues For A Honey

A BOLT from the blues alright. On this, their third album, Barefoot Contessa perfect a slow, narcotic and melancholic avant-country/blues out of the sparest, spaciest structures. The effect is Polly Jean Harvey jamming with Mazzy Star (or even David Roback's first band The Rain Parade) under direction from The Walkabouts.

Tunes like the opening 'Worldly Goods' and 'We Are Each Other' are torn 'n' tired, but are elevated by the beautiful tones of vocalist Helene, a chanteuse who seems to know the untrodden paths that connect Patsy Cline to Patti Smith. Indeed, much of the album's finely-balanced ambience is down to her emotive but never exhibitionistic phrasing, lending even drugstore cowboy hymns like 'Lullaby N.Y.' a European rather than nouveau-Nashville vibe.

But then, Blues For A Honey was recorded in Barnet, and one imagines the moors were a more immediate and elemental force than any real or imagined dustbowls. And whatever about the terrain, tunes like 'On A High' and 'Superanything' manage a kind of drunken but graceful gait, the shattered dignity of a ballerina with an artificial limb.

One must also commend Graham Gargiulo's clean but not antiseptic production, layering gorgeous swathes of acoustic guitar, big boomy snares, tambourines, and overwrought slide and electric shimmers.

Let this album stand as a lesson in the evils of niche marketing. Rural beauties like Barefoot Contessa get filed under indie/rock when big-haired sub-Cher revues such as Shania Twain get country radio kudos - it's a weird one. But never mind the honky-tonks, there's no doubting the integrity of music like this.

Ideally, one should haul Blues For A Honey and a six pack up on the roof some mid-summer's eve, and let it all sweep over you like the wheeling of the night sky.