Elizabeth Cook defies categorization. I was familiar with her work from the Don Was-produced Welder (2010) and her Gospel Plow EP (2012) so I went into 2020's Aftermath thinking I knew what to expect: more of the same from a country iconoclast with a wicked sense of humor and eye for detail.
Wow. I was not expecting this.
Aftermath is all that and more. It’s the love child of Mick Ronson and Dolly Parton, with Janis Joplin and Siouxsie Sioux serving as Godmother and midwife (respectively). The tracks range from urgent calls to action to jangle-fests that flirt with Club and Country dance floors, seamlessly blending glam rock and twang in its paeans to lost souls. From the swaggering “Bayonette” (am I the only one who hears nods to Melanie’s “Brand New Key?”) to the haunting “When She Comes,” listeners are taken from one character study to another, name dropping JC Penny here and invoking the spirit of Flannery O’Connor there. In one song you laugh, in the next you cry.
Smartly produced by Butch Walker (Fall Out Boy, Shovels & Rope, P!nk, Weezer, Train, Sugarland, Adam Lambert), the sound is engaging and captivating and free of genre stereotypes, full of nice touches of percussion and keyboards that augment both the bleak and the wry.
I am not sure I ever want to hang out with the people described in these songs, from the ‘Thick Georgia Woman” to the “Perfect Girls Of Pop,” from the honky tonk singers to the trailer trash lotharios. But they are nothing but engaging, as Elizabeth notes in the lyrics: “country music and hillbilly pain make stories that’ll hurt ya, and hold ya like a chain.”
What do you do with an artist who’s too weird for country, and too country for rock? If you’re Elizabeth Cook, you embrace it and put the petal to the metal and create something wholly other. Aftermath is fantastic, a solid recommendation for any fan of music.
4/5
Elizabeth Cook / Aftermath
Agent Love Music
51 minutes
