Lindi Ortega, Faded Gloryville - album review

Download: Ashes; Faded Gloryville; To Love Somebody; When You Ain’t Home

For her latest album, country singer Lindi Ortega split sessions between Nashville and Muscle Shoals.

The result stretches her character in new and intriguing ways, effectively redefining Ortega as a cross between Loretta Lynn and Amy Winehouse, with her impassioned vibrato applied to unflinching emotional pleas and revelations. “Ashes” is just aching for release, a sultry but devastated Ortega begging “Don’t leave me in the ashes of your memory”.

Equally desolate is “Someday Soon”, with its barren realisation “I wonder if I moved on, would he notice that I’m gone?”; while the co-dependency anthem “Run-Down Neighborhood” is taken at a jaunty clip that owes as much to the Burritos and the Bakersfield sound as it does to Nashville.

Elsewhere, “When You Ain’t Home” features a Band-like blend of lolloping country gait with louche horns and tart guitar.