Amanda Shires – My Pieces Of Land CD/LP+MP3 (BMG Rights Management)
My Piece Of Land is Amanda’s third record and follows up 2013′s Down Fell The Doves and was primarily written while pregnant with her and husband Jason Isbell’s first child. “Shires is a virtuoso, and anyone who’s seen her front her own band or play in Isbell’s knows she can cultivate musical drama.
One of Amanda Shires’ best assets as a songwriter is the vivid way she has with off-kilter imagery. It’s a lure into her songs that has worked to excellent effect on “When You Need a Train It Never Comes,” from her 2010 album Carrying Lightning, or “Bulletproof” on the 2013 follow-up, Down Fell the Doves.
A few tracks on My Piece Of Land (which was produced by Dave Cobb, who loves nuance and rocking out in equal measure) build to big climaxes: ‘My Love – The Storm’ is the classic Garth Brooks-style stomper its title implies, while ‘You Are My Home’ builds to a grand finale that recalls the mid-1970s sound of Warren Zevon. ” Many of these tunes contain an undercurrent of disquiet, though it’s never less than artfully expressed. Her unease is especially conspicuous on “Slippin,” as she imagines a lover out on the town giving in to temptations that spell their end: “Tonight could be the night you go slippin’ away,” she sings, her voice subdued over a mix of acoustic guitars. There’s a subtler regret on opener “The Way It Dimmed,” a lean country number with jaunty electric guitar licks snaking around her vocals as she uses the past-tense to describe passion she (or her narrator) wants and can’t help but pull away from. A road trip goes wrong on the cinematic “Pale Fire,” which features a beautifully mournful fiddle line after the refrain (and harmony vocals from Jason Isbell, Shires’ husband, who also plays guitar on the album); and she blurs boundaries on the spare “Harmless”—“It might have been cheating/ Where exactly is the line?” she murmurs—just to see how far she can go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88a5PcZuEk4
Amanda Shires can command a spotlight. But My Piece Of Land really shines in subtle gradations, in the natural environment where the voice warbles and catches, and the mind adjusts, opens up and leans toward love.”
The Fat Angel Sings 