This is a beautifully understated album that very quickly insinuates itself under your skin. Lovely tunes and immaculate playing throughout make it a very easy listening experience but don’t let that fool you into thinking that this is in any way bland music.
"Tin Heart" takes its inspiration from traditional American country-folk music but it is also possessed of an undeniable pop sensibility. The real diamond in the crown is the vocals of Jan Smith herself which call to mind the slightly unconventional tone, timing and phrasing of the likes of Natalie Merchant and Nanci Griffith giving the songs a certain strangeness and edge.
The title track is a slow and mournful country ballad aided in its sense of loss by plaintive pedal steel and opening lyrics that set the scene perfectly, “I bought my Maker’s up Bardstown at a liquor store window drive-thru / tonight I am planning on drinking it all down / I’m planning to get over you. ‘Ionesco’s Chair’ is a more up-beat affair, almost crowing about the virtues of a lover while dancing around the sparkling mandolin and flirting with the lead guitar lines, played majestically on acoustic guitar by Tom Proutt. ‘Rum In My Morning Coffee’ has an almost funky feel, creating a smoky, morning after atmosphere that wraps itself around its lyrical heart, “I thought I might like to find someone to love / I was never lonesome till I met you”.
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‘Every Dish In the House’ again builds itself around mandolin and acoustic guitar, and if you ever thought folk music couldn’t be sexy then listen to this, it has a very definite itch that requires immediate scratching! The album closes with ‘The Fisherman’, a folky tour-de-force in which the stock instrumentation is joined by Sara Read’s fiddle which squeezes a slightly Celtic flavour into the stew. All in all an album that has surprised me with the regularity and willingness with which I’ve returned to it.
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