Judging by the cover photo, Melissa Greener is a strong, self-sufficient woman who means business.
Her bio tells us she is a young, smooth-voiced folk crooner who grew up in Detroit, lived for a number of years in Austin, Texas and is now based in Nashville where this album was recorded by Brad Jones.
The power of love and the paradoxical feelings of weakness it causes are what drive the eleven songs on her third studio release.
This is the overriding message of the two cover songs she chooses: a faithful rendering of Jesse Winchester's That's What Make You Strong and an insipid, slowed down version of The Beatles' If I Fell.
In the songs she wrote, or co-wrote, herself, the heart hurts more than it heals. The organ is somewhat unflatteringly likened to a machine in the Tex-Mexy title track wherein she sings about a Spanish drover who "once knew the circuitry to the box inside my chest" which makes the man sound more like a skilled mechanic than an imaginative lover.
Ghost In The Van is set on the road, haunted by the memory of a former lover. It gives a fresh slant to the notion of giving up the ghost.
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Why is a sad song about a passionless marriage, with a couple who are together yet apart, going through the motions and keeping up appearances ("we waste our days and the bills get paid").
In The Mess Love Made, Greener quotes Dylan Thomas ("rage against the dying of the light") but anger is not an emotion she embraces readily.
Overall, any ill-wind blowing through her songs comes in the form of soft breezes rather than stormy gales.
The album closes with an Irish-themed ballad (Inisheer), a gentle refrain that typifies the very mellow mood of the record.
Everybody needs love, it's true, but we're also driven by powerful, complex maelstrom of feelings that the songs on this album only refer to in passing, before discreetly moving on.
Melissa Greener's website
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