A strong debut album overshadowed by its title hit

The raw, bluesy edge in Gentry’s voice as she spells out “M-I-Double S-I-Double S-I-Double P-I” sounds as if she’s still clearing her throat from the previous night’s bourbons and Marlboros. The album’s title hit doesn’t really prepare you for the hard soul guitar, funky drumming and swampy horns of the opening track. That same vocal edginess also works well on the album’s ballads, combining folk, country, soul and jazz notes with textural orchestrations. The album’s few pop tracks, including “Sunday Best” and “Hurry, Tuesday Child,” don’t play to Gentry’s strengths and are outclassed by the funkier, bluesier, country-folk. Gentry wrote ten of the album’s eleven cuts, but she didn’t have ten fully original arrangements, as the acoustic guitar and bass hooks of “Ode to Billy Joe” are repeated on nearly every track, blunting the punch of “Ode to Billy Joe” by the time you get to the hit at album’s end. Her lyrics sketch the Delta’s poverty, fauna (“Bugs”), commerce, characters, and gothic secrets. This is a strong debut, though it doesn’t fully live up to its original single (“Mississippi Delta”), nor the flip-side (“Ode to Billy Joe”) that shot Gentry to stardom. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]