As a native of California, DANI LINNETZ should know all about sweet and sugary country pop music. And so it proves with this, her second long player, the mysteriously titled “Caller Seventeen”.
Cutting her musical cloth in the Anti-Folk surroundings of New York’s East Village, Linnetz has blossomed into a confident, well-travelled songwriter who, if she keeps this up, will soon be playing on a radio near you.
Opener ‘The Library’ has a lovely electric-country feel to it. Pete Imbres' guitar playing holds it all together, while Mike Stark’s ever-reliable Hammond is also prominent. But it’s on tracks ‘Would You Promise’ and ‘I Can’t Wait’ that she really shines in this 13-song collection. Here Linnetz shows she has the vocal strength, and dexterity, to suggest a promising future beckons.
Lyrically, Linnetz also proves to be coming of age. Lines such as “Give me drugs, I’m not tough enough without” (‘Metal Boxes’), and “You’re good at pretending, you already know how this ends, You’re good at demanding my attention, but it’s a scam” on the Lucinda Williams-like ‘In Response’, prove she has the capacity for deep and intelligent wordplay.
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Other standout tracks include ‘Like A Ghost’, ‘If That’s What This Feels Like’, and the aforementioned ‘Metal Boxes’. On the down side, there are, of course, some fillers to be found here. ‘Bedroom Fort’ sounds like Nanci Griffith on a bad day, while ‘Capture’ and ‘Like To Lose’ feels like country music by numbers. But hey, nobody’s perfect. Right?
In the past, Dani Linnetz has been compared to Shelby Lynn and Kirsten Hersh, as well as the two artists I have already mentioned, but, on this occasion, that certainly doesn’t detract from what is essentially an excellent introduction to a rising talent in her own right.
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