1994's
Garage Orchestra
had been
Cindy Lee Berryhill
's most ambitious and satisfying album to date, but touring with the massive ensemble she used to record it was wildly impractical. For the purposes of playing out,
Berryhill
assembled a compact version of the Garage Orchestra featuring three of her collaborators from the album:
Chris Davies
on bass, guitar, and mandolin,
Renata Bratt
on cello,
Randy Hoffman
on assorted percussion instruments, and
on guitar and harmonica. While
was eager to use the full orchestra again on her next album, a variety of circumstances led to her pushing up the recording date, and she instead went into the studio with the musicians from her touring unit. As a consequence, 1996's
Straight Outta Marysville
is a far more intimate listening experience, and while
Hoffman
and
Bratt
certainly give this a bit of the flavor of the
sessions, this is spare and compact where her previous album had been full of details and dynamics. That said, these players were sympatico with
before and they were no less so here, and even though this music is a long, long way from jazz, the comfortable interplay and and instinctual give and take between the players owes more to that than the grand chamber pop of the Orchestra. The arrangements and performances here are decidedly different than her previous release, yet
's songwriting, witty and honest and full of canny observations about the world around her and the people who live there, show that the lessons she learned between 1989's
Naked Movie Star
had stuck. Between the arrogant track stars in "High Jump," the gender-fluid firebrand of "Diana," and the sunny surrealism of "Elvis from Marysville," this album finds
writing near the top of her game, and the emotive unpredictability of her vocals is in better control than in her early days.
isn't quite the masterpiece that
was, but it certainly confirms that the growth and vision that made that album great was still very much in play. [In 2019,
Omnivore Recordings
issued an expanded edition of
that made the album available again after years out of print. The audio is clear and pleasing in this version of the album, and six bonus tracks accompany the fourteen from the original release. The extra songs aren't revelatory, but the rehearsal cuts show how well this ensemble worked together, and the cover of
Bob Dylan
's "I Don't Believe You" is well worth hearing. The booklet also includes memories of the making of the album from
,
Davies
, and
. This is one of
's very best albums, and this edition presents it to its best advantage.] ~ Mark Deming